wouldn't it be better if quarantined messages also stored in mysql, so that we can choose if they should either be in the filesystem or mysql. example for configuration for mysql storage is in the README.sql-mysql.txt text file above the 'quarantine' table create statement

i use the sql storage mainly for a php based solution (on a per user basis) to review the spammails und reinject them to the mailsystem. database size is on my installtion not a big problem, because i have the suggested clean up statements from the README.sql-mysql.txt for the tables in my crontab. it's right that the db will else get bigger and bigger. for me it is a little bit easier to handle it through the webfrontend or directly on the db instead with command line tools.

here are the changed config entries for amavisd-new (the AM.PDP is used by the web frontend to communicate with amavisd without invoking shell code):

$inet_socket_port = [10024, 10026, 9998];
$inet_socket_bind = undef;

@storage_sql_dsn =
( ['DBI:mysql:database=****;host=127.0.0.1;port=3306', '***', '***']);

$interface_policy{’9998′} = ‘AM.PDP’;

$policy_bank{‘AM.PDP’} = {
protocol => ‘AM.PDP’,
inet_acl => [qw( 127.0.0.1 127.0.1.1 [::1] 192.168.120.1 )],
};

$banned_files_quarantine_method = ‘sql:’;
$spam_quarantine_method         = ‘sql:’;

on my system with 15 users i got around 100-200 spam massages per day, in the last time the amount decreased to 50-100.

for releasing i use MailZu http://sourceforge.net/projects/mailzu/ (i know it is a little bit outdated, but also allows me to edit the policys),  long time before i used ClamAV webmin http://wbmclamav.labs.libre-entreprise.org/ , and i also tested PostVisAdmin http://postvisadmin.sourceforge.net/ but here i had some problems to display the stored mails

i can't really say how it would affect a really busy server, i think the little overhead due to the mysql storage is acceptable if you would have a comfortable way to work then with the spam, but i can't give you some benchmarks, because never did them

How you store quarantine messages will have affect on performance depending on the number of messages. For high volume server, mysql should be far better. ANd it would greately improve if database maintenace is done, and if, for example, quarantine messages do have a time limit on how long they should be kept, let say 30 days, after which they can b eeither deleted or submited as spam, since nobody was looking for them.

As releasing messsages from quarantine is not a web email client, but administrative function, the need for the content of the message is not there. aving message in sql will simplify displaying first , lets say, 100 charactters of the message, just to give idea of message content.

Displaying sender, receipient and subject is sufficient to come to edicated decision about if message should be released or not. When yo think of it, if message is coming from unknown sender, with unexpected subject, it is probably a message that you could not care less about. Receipient is important in situation where domain admin is the only one who will release messages. When receipient A comes to them adn ask for email from sender B, they know exacly what to look for.

When it comes to releasing it is important to ad feature if sender can be automagicaly addedd to whitelist, just to prevent future events if sender is sending banned file types. Or to create a SA rule, with negative score, if content si the reason for banning. Either way there should be an interface to manage those exclusion from the rules imposed on the system wide.