No one likes unsolicited electronic mail. Even though you can easily delete messages describing ways to MAKE MONEY FAST, they take a toll on network bandwidth and reduce your productivity. The key to gaining the upper hand in the battle against spam is to understand the tools at your disposal. In Removing the Spam, Geoff Mulligan names those tools and then describes how to use several of them.
Mulligan begins explaining the operation and management of two widely distributed Unix e-mail tools: Sendmail and Procmail. In his section on Sendmail, the author answers the question asked by everyone who's ever been harassed on e-mail: How do I automatically trash mail from X? He shows you how to block mail based on mail attributes like sender, subject line, message size and several other parameters.
Coverage of Procmail in Removing the Spam includes the essentials of recipe files, but more ready-to-use mail-management recipes would be welcome. In addition to covering Sendmail and Procmail, the author addresses mailing lists under Majordomo and SmartList. He also provides a handy guide to the user and administrator commands that control these popular programs--just the thing you need the next time you're on a list and want to unsubscribe.
If you're generally unfamiliar with Unix and use a Unix-based Internet Service Provider (ISP), you will find this book to be an adequate orientation to how Unix machines manage e-mail. If you're more familiar with Unix mail programs, you'll find this book to be too elementary and lacking in details. It's a matter of your perspective. --David Wall
Review
"This book should be required reading for all mail administrators. The usefulness is not restricted to Spam, since admins will find brief discussions of a variety of common mail problems." -- Rob Slade, author of Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses
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