👋 A Welcome Message from John! 👋

[JohnMertz]

Hello All!

If you are here, it is probably because you have received word that the MailCleaner® AntiSpam Gateway is being deprecated. You probably recognize my name, John Mertz, from Enterprise Edition support tickets, moderation of the Community Edition forum, or nearly every commit to the MailCleaner® repository for the last several years.

I will not comment on the circumstances surrounding the deprecation of MailCleaner® by Alinto, except to note that as of April 12th, 2025, I am no longer an employee of Alinto. I still use MailCleaner® for my own email and still hold the open source values which attracted me to the company in the first place back in 2018. To this end, I still want to see a software solution like MailCleaner® persist for a long time into the future, and will be seeking to facilitate this!

Please check out the new GitHub organization that I have set up to continue this work, see the vision that I have in mind, and follow for updates!

[HansMeier1983]

Dear John,

do you have or can you create a FAQ document for MailCleaner Enterprise Edition users, who want to keep using their MailCleaner servers or want to move to your SpamTagger solution?

[JohnMertz]

Hi!

I will definitely be putting together some documentation. It's a little bit premature right now, however. I'm waiting to hear back from Alinto later next week to learn how they plan to handle the MailCleneaner Organization going forward, especially after all of the Enterprise Edition contracts end. I had expected that I would have been removed from the organization but this has not yet happened.

If I can get guarantees that I will remain a member of the organization and potentially inherit the organization when they no longer have paying customers then I'd rather just resume development there. Otherwise it will be a big hassle to get a significant number of users to switch to my repositories.

If it does end up being necessary to migrate to my repositories it will largely just require changing the upstream repositories for /root/Updater4MC and /usr/mailcleaner to point to my repositories instead. I'd probably make a script to do this.

In my proposal to continue working within the MailCleaner organization, I provided guarantees that I would not remove anything that would disrupt Enterprise Edition features for any remaining clients until all contracts have ended (eg. fetching and pushing of data from and to Alinto servers). So, if we do end up continuing to use the MailCleaner organization, then you may need to unregister the appliance when your contract ends to avoid download/upload errors (Alinto may force this on your machines, but I am not sure).

I'll provide instructions when I know for sure how we will proceed. I don't want to have a small handful of users follow one set of instructions only to have to reverse course or have extra hoops to jump through. In the meantime, even if your contract ends and if your machine is still registered, nothing should actually stop working. You will just stop downloading new Bayes data, SpamC rules and premium ClamAV signatures. Most of the value of Enterprise Edition has always come from the support contract, including some pro-active support for system warnings, etc. That is most of what you will lose when the contract ends. I hope that community contributions to documentation and discussions here will largely make up for that. I will also be working on tools to try to improve the filtering quality without the reliance on the centralized download servers. I have lots of ideas which I will be sharing soon.

[HansMeier1983]

Hi John, do you have any new information for us? Until now we haven’t changed anything with our mailcleaner servers and we would be happy to keep them running. Regards, Nicolai Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) | Geschäftsführer contact.itmc.de/n.roth<http://contact.itmc.de/n.roth> Von: John Mertz ***@***.***> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 17. April 2025 00:08 An: SpamTagger/.github ***@***.***> Cc: Nicolai Roth [itmc GmbH] ***@***.***>; Comment ***@***.***> Betreff: Re: [SpamTagger/.github] 👋 A Welcome Message from John! 👋 (Discussion #1) Hi! I will definitely be putting together some documentation. It's a little bit premature right now, however. I'm waiting to hear back from Alinto later next week to learn how they plan to handle the MailCleneaner Organization<https://github.com/MailCleaner> going forward, especially after all of the Enterprise Edition contracts end. I had expected that I would have been removed from the organization but this has not yet happened. If I can get guarantees that I will remain a member of the organization and potentially inherit the organization when they no longer have paying customers then I'd rather just resume development there. Otherwise it will be a big hassle to get a significant number of users to switch to my repositories. If it does end up being necessary to migrate to my repositories it will largely just require changing the upstream repositories for /root/Updater4MC and /usr/mailcleaner to point to my repositories instead. I'd probably make a script to do this. In my proposal to continue working within the MailCleaner organization, I provided guarantees that I would not remove anything that would disrupt Enterprise Edition features for any remaining clients until all contracts have ended (eg. fetching and pushing of data from and to Alinto servers). So, if we do end up continuing to use the MailCleaner organization, then you may need to unregister the appliance when your contract ends to avoid download/upload errors (Alinto may force this on your machines, but I am not sure). I'll provide instructions when I know for sure how we will proceed. I don't want to have a small handful of users follow one set of instructions only to have to reverse course or have extra hoops to jump through. In the meantime, even if your contract ends and if your machine is still registered, nothing should actually stop working. You will just stop downloading new Bayes data, SpamC rules and premium ClamAV signatures. Most of the value of Enterprise Edition has always come from the support contract, including some pro-active support for system warnings, etc. That is most of what you will lose when the contract ends. I hope that community contributions to documentation and discussions here will largely make up for that. I will also be working on tools to try to improve the filtering quality without the reliance on the centralized download servers. I have lots of ideas which I will be sharing soon. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#1 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BEOJ7YWBQVEDBFXFBYZ5PDD2Z3IFHAVCNFSM6AAAAAB3AJGFPKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTEOBWGAYTGOI>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.******@***.***>>

[JohnMertz]

Hi,

Well...

I'm waiting to hear back from Alinto later next week to learn how they plan to handle the MailCleneaner Organization going forward.

I did hear back a few weeks ago and there appears to be no possibility that they will hand over the organization, or allow for continued use of the MailCleaner trademark, even after they no longer have any customers using it. I have been removed from the GitHub organization and it seems that all of the repos will be permanently archived.

So, I'm going to be continuing work under the name/repository SpamTagger Plus. This situation makes my life a little bit easier because if I'm incapable of ever contributing to the official repository, then it doesn't make sense for me to put any effort into maintaining the current release. If I were to fork the current release, it would still require users to rebase to my Jessie fork, then migrate to the Trixie release when it becomes available. It will be simpler to just have users jump straight to Trixie and not having to worry about supporting Jessie at all.

It seems that Alinto won't be making any changes, so your machine(s) should keep working as is indefinitely. The only real problem would arise if something fundamentally changes with email protocols, etc. This is exceedingly unlikely.

I've been taking the first few months of my unemployment to catch up on various other projects (mostly home renovations), so I've only been working on the next release about one day per week, so things are not necessarily progressing quickly, but I should have much more time starting sometime in August and will start posting more regular updates then.

Currently I have a Trixie VM which is able to process mail, but the WebUI is entirely broken due to changes in the Zend framework. I also need to sort through all of the patches that I've applied outside of the actual /usr/mailcleaner directory (the GitHub repository) in order to properly replicate these steps within the build scripts so that I can properly generate new VMs.

Thanks for your continued interest.

[mdio33]

Hello John,

The news of Mailcleaner's discontinuation left me sad and worried.
Therefore, I want to thank you for continuing the project.

I'll keep an eye on it and try to convince my organization to support your work.

[HansMeier1983]

Dear John, I got final information from Alinto: * With end of the year, they want to put us in the MailCleaner community edition. * We will then lose our cluster setup. * We will lose addons/options. I think this means that we lose Spamhaus and Spamhaus Content and perhaps more. Therefore, time is of the essence. 1) Most important is to keep the cluster setup working. Do you see any posibility for us to block the change to mailcleaner community edition? Change config, delete Files, block IPs, something like that? 2) A filter system is only good if it has access to RBLs and up to date detection methods. Do you see any possibility to keep this running? In the long run, we need a solution that receives ongoing support. Will there be a way to migrate from MailCleaner to one of your new solutions? How far along are you with development? Regards, Nicolai Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) | Geschäftsführer contact.itmc.de/n.roth<http://contact.itmc.de/n.roth>

[JohnMertz]

Hi Nicolai (and anyone else with similar concerns),

Preface

I cannot speak with 100% confidence about what actions Alinto is capable of taking or what actions your contract agreement with them permits. Everything I'll discuss here is visible within the MailCleaner Community Edition source code, however it is possible that additional proprietary code has been applied via the Enterprise update mechanisms which could enhance their ability to damage the functionality of an existing appliance (although I doubt that this is the case).

With all of that said, you will need to proceed at your own risk.

Simplest solution:

This is what I would recommend most users do prior to the end of their contract. It is the simplest option to maintain almost all of your current functionality while still deactivating your Enterprise Edition license. I addressed each of your concerns, as well as some of the steps discussed here, in more detail under the next heading.

Do the following on each of your machines:

1. Manually edit /etc/mailcleaner.conf to change REGISTERED to 2. This will tell the system that it is now a registered Community Edition appliance, disabling any ongoing Enterprise Edition script behaviour which only acts when it is set to 1, while also disabling any nags about the system not being registered.

2. Run the /usr/mailcleaner/bin/unregister_mailcleaner.sh script (or use the 'unregister' option within the WebUI; it runs this command under the hood). This will do Alinto the courtesy of letting them know that the machine is no longer registered, it will remove all of the support SSH keys, delete the firewall rules for their IP ranges, delete the mailcleaner-support WebUI account and revert the web templates to CE. If the REGISTERED value is already 2, it will not delete any of the SpamC/NewslD rules, RBL files, Bayes databases or ClamAV rules.

3. Run rm -rf /usr/mailcleaner/etc/exim/mc_binary since this would also only be deleted in the previous step if REGISTERED is 1. I think that this program is essentially only able to run the unregister_mailcleaner.sh script anyways, so it should not be capable of doing any additional harm, but is safest to just remove it.

4. (optional) Update licenses for add-ons. As discussed below, you can source your own licenses for SpamHaus and/or ESET. The details on how to update to your own license are provided where these are discussed below.

Details

As noted above, I don't support or recommend that you attempt to leave the machines registered for Enterprise Edition beyond the end of your license. Beyond potential conflicts to contract agreements, it is generally just not necessary. 90% of what was provided by an Enterprise Edition license was the support contract. The majority of what happens when the appliance is unregistered is that the tools that facilitate support (as well as the tools to forcibly unregister your machines) are removed. The steps above will also remove these. The additional features provided by Enterprise Edition (prior to any add-ons) are:

• MailCleaner RBLs - These DNS servers are public to begin with, they are just not configured out-of-the-box until you register. The steps I mention above preserve the configuration files for these RBLs. Otherwise, if you take a backup of /usr/mailcleaner/etc/rbls/MC* and then restore them after your machines are un-registered, you will continue to be able to use them. However, I doubt that they will remain online for long after your contract is up, since they should have no need for them after the remaining customers are gone.

• Additional SpamC Rules - These are not public insofar as your machines require Enterprise Edition credentials to download them in the first place, but once they are on your system, you can read them in plain text. When no longer registered, you'll stop getting new rule updates, but I doubt that they have been updated since I've been gone anyways. The steps I mention above preserve these rules. Otherwise, unregistering will removed the additional files from /usr/mailcleaner/share for both SpamC and Newsld. You could back them up and restore them after unregistering. This is a more questionable action to take but I'm sympathetic to a consumer protection argument (potentially covered by the proposed "Digital Fairness Act"); having already paid for this downloadable content and given that it requires no additional effort on Alinto's part to continue providing the rules as is, it may be incumbent upon them not to remove the rules.

• Additional ClamAV rules - ClamAV rules are already frozen for all users in the same state. However, Enterprise users also get some additional rules from SecuriteInfo. The steps I mention above preserve these rules. Otherwise, you can take a backup of /var/mailcleaner/spool/clamav and restore it after unregistering. I personally believe that this is justifiable for the same reasons as the SpamC rules.

• Updated Bayes databases - CE users get a 30 day old snapshot of these databases once per month instead of the latest provided to EE users. However, to my knowledge no one has been manually reviewing (non)spam reports since I left anyways, so the only new Bayes training has been from a subset of reports which are automatically trained which are almost entirely messages which were already classified in the desired way to begin with by some other means. You probably won't notice a difference in quality. The steps I mention above preserve the current databases. In 30 days time you'd be re-downloading a very similar copy of this database anyways. Otherwise, you could backup /var/mailcleaner/spool/bogofilter/databases and /var/mailcleaner/spool/spamassassin and restore them after unregistering.

• Enterprise Web/Email Template - These are simply linked to the _ee versions of images and CSS files within /usr/mailcleaner/www/{user/htdocs,admin/public}/templates and /usr/mailcleaner/templates and are entirely cosmetic. The steps above will not preserve these templates. If you really want to continue using the Enterprise templates, they are still present on your machines after unregistering and you can just run the commands from lines 309-325 in /usr/mailcleaner/bin/register_mailcleaner.sh. If you already have a custom template, you won't even notice this change.

Your Concerns:

With end of the year, they want to put us in the MailCleaner community edition.

This is possible. When you activate Enterprise Edition, your machines run /usr/mailcleaner/bin/register_mailcleaner.sh. This downloads a 'router' configuration which is loaded in by the Exim config if it exists (.include_if_exists SRCDIR/etc/exim/mc_binary/mc_router). This is capable of forcibly unregistering your appliance with an appropriately crafted email. This is already removed in the suggested steps above. Otherwise you would need to delete the contents of /usr/mailcleaner/etc/exim/mc_binary on each node to prevent this method of unregistration.

The other mechanism that they have is to directly log in to the appliance via SSH or the WebUI and manually unregister it.

While your appliance is still registered, it will attempt to regularly create or update a WebUI user account named mailcleaner-support (Configuration->Accesses). This access is already removed in the suggested steps above. If you manually delete it, it will return as a result of /usr/mailcleaner/bin/fetch_administrator.sh, a sub-process of /usr/mailcleaner/scripts/cron/mailcleaner_cron.pl which runs if your machine is registered for Enterprise support. You could disable this by adding exit to the start of fetch_administractor.sh so that it doesn't do anything, then delete the mailcleaner-support user. However, there are also many other small tasks which happen if the appliance is still registered, such as downloading new rules and databases. Those could later be removed or poisoned, so you'd probably also want to disable all of those scripts as well. At that point, you might as well just unregister.

To prevent access by SSH, you'd need to run:

echo "delete from external_access where (allowed_ip='193.246.63.0/24' OR allowed_ip='195.176.194.0/24');" | mc_mysql -m mc_config
/usr/mailcleaner/etc/init.d/firewall restart

That will remove the "ALLOW" rule for their IPs in the internal MailCleaner firewall. It is also already done with the suggested steps above. In the event that the MailCleaner firewall stops working, you could also go through /root/.ssh/authorized_keys and delete any keys that don't belong to you and that aren't the "internal" keys for your cluster This is also automatically done with the suggested steps above.

We will then lose our cluster setup.

This should not be the case. All of the actions taken when unregistering a machine are included in /usr/mailcleaner/bin/unregister_mailcleaner.sh. This does not include disabling an existing cluster. Likewise, it is possible to create a cluster of CE machines, so even if they were removed from the cluster, you could add them again with /usr/mailcleaner/scripts/configuration/slaves.pl (run first on the "master" to enumerate the allowed "slaves", then on each "slave" to connect to the "master"; MYMAILCLEANERPWD in /etc/mailcleaner.conf is the password from each remote host that you need to enter when allowing access/delegating to it).

We will lose addons/options. I think this means that we lose Spamhaus and Spamhaus Content and perhaps more.

This is true. Alinto will have access to your SpamHaus license as your reseller. However, you can just purchase a license directly. If the RBLs have already been removed, you can run /usr/mailcleaner/install/install_options.sh --spamhaus and provide your license token when prompted. Otherwise, if it is still installed, you can just replace the token in each of the files /usr/mailcleaner/etc/rbls/SPAMHAUS*.cf. Note what the existing token looks like (all lowercase and numeric, around 30(?) characters long). There is another ID that they provide which is much longer, contains capitals, and is not valid for use here.

The only other add-on currently being sold should be ESET antivirus. You can also purchase a license from them directly. You'll need your login email address and a key that looks like XXX-XXX-XXX (I think that the required product is "Server Security" which is available in all of the consumer bundles. MailCleaner/Alinto's reseller account is able to license it individually for as little as one host, but it doesn't appears that the consumer licensing is that flexible. If it is not currently installed, then this is time sensitive because the ESET package is hosted by Alinto (I have a backup copy of the package, but the installation steps become a lot more manual if it cannot be downloaded from Alinto by the script). To install it you would run /usr/mailcleaner/install/install_options.sh --eset and follow the prompts. It it is already installed, you should just be able to update the license with /opt/eset/sbin/lic -u your.email@domain.com -p XXX-XXX-XXX.

1. Most important is to keep the cluster setup working. Do you see any posibility for us to block the change to mailcleaner community edition? Change config, delete Files, block IPs, something like that?

All access from Alinto should be blocked using the suggested steps. Your machines will be changed to Community Edition, but you won't really lose any significant functionality. Otherwise you can go through all of the manual steps above to effectively unregister without actually unregistering.

2. A filter system is only good if it has access to RBLs and up to date detection methods. Do you see any possibility to keep this running?

As noted, you can continue using the MailCleaner RBLs, since they are public, but they will probably go offline soon. The remaining RBLs (eg. SpamCop) will continue to work, including SpamHaus if you get your own license.

In the long run, we need a solution that receives ongoing support.

If you need assistance applying the suggested step above, or if you need any other support in the future, I'm available to provide support via email and SSH access (I see that you already found my email!) at a rate of $100 CAD/hour.

Will there be a way to migrate from MailCleaner to one of your new solutions?

Yes! Unless something very odd happens, it should be essentially the same as any MailCleaner -> MailCleaner migration. This means installing a new appliance, stopping MailCleaner, copying /etc/mailcleaner.conf and the contents of /var/mailcleaner/ to the new appliance, then starting the new appliance. For SpamTagger Plus there is likely to be minor variations (eg. the configuration file will need to be named spamtagger.conf on the new machine and a script will probably be necessary to apply necessary database updates) but everything should be portable.

How far along are you with development?

The majority of the work is done, but it is also a bit of a moving target. Because we currently have an opportunity for quite a clean break from MailCleaner, it is probably the best opportunity I'll ever get to make huge changes and cut a bunch of baggage that MailCleaner has desperately needed for many years. Almost all of the work to simply modernize the existing application code is done, but there are other tasks that I want to complete including a complete overhaul of how images are built and distributed and removing all of the remaining MailCleaner branding. I've been making great progress on the former in this repo, however the completion date of that effort is way too difficult to pin down (especially as I'm looking into the extra work necessary to maintain a Debian base instead of migrating to CentOS Stream).

At the moment I am not getting paid to do any of this, so I'm not able to devote my full attention to it. I have other responsibilities and some other freelance work keeping me busy a good chunk of the time. However, I do see potential in selling support/development services for SpamTagger as a full-time opportunity if interest is great enough after a general release, so I am quite motivated to keep spending as much time on it as I can.

Assuming that there are no more significant delays, I anticipate that I may have images available for testing somewhere around the start of the year (perhaps earlier if I deem it to not be worth the effort to get the images built using Debian, perhaps later if I deem that it is but it is more work than I anticipate).

[HansMeier1983]

Hello John, I sent you a mail with some questions to your mailcleaner@ mail address, because I did not want to have it publicly visible on github. What is the best way to send you private message about mailcleaner related topics? Two of my four questions are still relevant for me: b) I've visited the www.spamhaus.org<http://www.spamhaus.org> website several times, but I can't find any way to become a customer directly, nor any information about paid services. I understood from your email that it would be easy to purchase the SPAMHAUS license directly. How does one purchase it? c) On the ESET website, however, there are various products available for purchase. Is there a specific term for the service/license that one would need to purchase from ESET? Best regards Nicolai Von: John Mertz ***@***.***> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 19. November 2025 07:09 An: SpamTagger/.github ***@***.***> Cc: Nicolai Roth [itmc GmbH] ***@***.***>; Comment ***@***.***> Betreff: Re: [SpamTagger/.github] 👋 A Welcome Message from John! 👋 (Discussion #1) Hi Nicolai (and anyone else with similar concerns), Preface I cannot speak with 100% confidence about what actions Alinto is capable of taking or what actions your contract agreement with them permits. Everything I'll discuss here is visible within the MailCleaner Community Edition source code, however it is possible that additional proprietary code has been applied via the Enterprise update mechanisms which could enhance their ability to damage the functionality of an existing appliance (although I doubt that this is the case). With all of that said, you will need to proceed at your own risk. Simplest solution: This is what I would recommend most users do prior to the end of their contract. It is the simplest option to maintain almost all of your current functionality while still deactivating your Enterprise Edition license. I addressed each of your concerns, as well as some of the steps discussed here, in more detail under the next heading. Do the following on each of your machines: 1. Manually edit /etc/mailcleaner.conf to change REGISTERED to 2. This will tell the system that it is now a registered Community Edition appliance, disabling any ongoing Enterprise Edition script behaviour which only acts when it is set to 1, while also disabling any nags about the system not being registered. 2. Run the /usr/mailcleaner/bin/unregister_mailcleaner.sh script (or use the 'unregister' option within the WebUI; it runs this command under the hood). This will do Alinto the courtesy of letting them know that the machine is no longer registered, it will remove all of the support SSH keys, delete the firewall rules for their IP ranges, delete the mailcleaner-support WebUI account and revert the web templates to CE. If the REGISTERED value is already 2, it will not delete any of the SpamC/NewslD rules, RBL files, Bayes databases or ClamAV rules. 3. Run rm -rf /usr/mailcleaner/etc/exim/mc_binary since this would also only be deleted in the previous step if REGISTERED is 1. I think that this program is essentially only able to run the unregister_mailcleaner.sh script anyways, so it should not be capable of doing any additional harm, but is safest to just remove it. 4. (optional) Update licenses for add-ons. As discussed below, you can source your own licenses for SpamHaus and/or ESET. The details on how to update to your own license are provided where these are discussed below. Details As noted above, I don't support or recommend that you attempt to leave the machines registered for Enterprise Edition beyond the end of your license. Beyond potential conflicts to contract agreements, it is generally just not necessary. 90% of what was provided by an Enterprise Edition license was the support contract. The majority of what happens when the appliance is unregistered is that the tools that facilitate support (as well as the tools to forcibly unregister your machines) are removed. The steps above will also remove these. The additional features provided by Enterprise Edition (prior to any add-ons) are: * MailCleaner RBLs - These DNS servers are public to begin with, they are just not configured out-of-the-box until you register. The steps I mention above preserve the configuration files for these RBLs. Otherwise, if you take a backup of /usr/mailcleaner/etc/rbls/MC* and then restore them after your machines are un-registered, you will continue to be able to use them. However, I doubt that they will remain online for long after your contract is up, since they should have no need for them after the remaining customers are gone. * Additional SpamC Rules - These are not public insofar as your machines require Enterprise Edition credentials to download them in the first place, but once they are on your system, you can read them in plain text. When no longer registered, you'll stop getting new rule updates, but I doubt that they have been updated since I've been gone anyways. The steps I mention above preserve these rules. Otherwise, unregistering will removed the additional files from /usr/mailcleaner/share for both SpamC and Newsld. You could back them up and restore them after unregistering. This is a more questionable action to take but I'm sympathetic to a consumer protection argument (potentially covered by the proposed "Digital Fairness Act"); having already paid for this downloadable content and given that it requires no additional effort on Alinto's part to continue providing the rules as is, it may be incumbent upon them not to remove the rules. * Additional ClamAV rules - ClamAV rules are already frozen for all users in the same state. However, Enterprise users also get some additional rules from SecuriteInfo. The steps I mention above preserve these rules. Otherwise, you can take a backup of /var/mailcleaner/spool/clamav and restore it after unregistering. I personally believe that this is justifiable for the same reasons as the SpamC rules. * Updated Bayes databases - CE users get a 30 day old snapshot of these databases once per month instead of the latest provided to EE users. However, to my knowledge no one has been manually reviewing (non)spam reports since I left anyways, so the only new Bayes training has been from a subset of reports which are automatically trained which are almost entirely messages which were already classified in the desired way to begin with by some other means. You probably won't notice a difference in quality. The steps I mention above preserve the current databases. In 30 days time you'd be re-downloading a very similar copy of this database anyways. Otherwise, you could backup /var/mailcleaner/spool/bogofilter/databases and /var/mailcleaner/spool/spamassassin and restore them after unregistering. * Enterprise Web/Email Template - These are simply linked to the _ee versions of images and CSS files within /usr/mailcleaner/www/{user/htdocs,admin/public}/templates and /usr/mailcleaner/templates and are entirely cosmetic. The steps above will not preserve these templates. If you really want to continue using the Enterprise templates, they are still present on your machines after unregistering and you can just run the commands from lines 309-325 in /usr/mailcleaner/bin/register_mailcleaner.sh. If you already have a custom template, you won't even notice this change. Your Concerns: With end of the year, they want to put us in the MailCleaner community edition. This is possible. When you activate Enterprise Edition, your machines run /usr/mailcleaner/bin/register_mailcleaner.sh. This downloads a 'router' configuration which is loaded in by the Exim config if it exists (.include_if_exists SRCDIR/etc/exim/mc_binary/mc_router). This is capable of forcibly unregistering your appliance with an appropriately crafted email. This is already removed in the suggested steps above. Otherwise you would need to delete the contents of /usr/mailcleaner/etc/exim/mc_binary on each node to prevent this method of unregistration. The other mechanism that they have is to directly log in to the appliance via SSH or the WebUI and manually unregister it. While your appliance is still registered, it will attempt to regularly create or update a WebUI user account named mailcleaner-support (Configuration->Accesses). This access is already removed in the suggested steps above. If you manually delete it, it will return as a result of /usr/mailcleaner/bin/fetch_administrator.sh, a sub-process of /usr/mailcleaner/scripts/cron/mailcleaner_cron.pl which runs if your machine is registered for Enterprise support. You could disable this by adding exit to the start of fetch_administractor.sh so that it doesn't do anything, then delete the mailcleaner-support user. However, there are also many other small tasks which happen if the appliance is still registered, such as downloading new rules and databases. Those could later be removed or poisoned, so you'd probably also want to disable all of those scripts as well. At that point, you might as well just unregister. To prevent access by SSH, you'd need to run: echo "delete from external_access where (allowed_ip='193.246.63.0/24' OR allowed_ip='195.176.194.0/24');" | mc_mysql -m mc_config /usr/mailcleaner/etc/init.d/firewall restart That will remove the "ALLOW" rule for their IPs in the internal MailCleaner firewall. It is also already done with the suggested steps above. In the event that the MailCleaner firewall stops working, you could also go through /root/.ssh/authorized_keys and delete any keys that don't belong to you and that aren't the "internal" keys for your cluster This is also automatically done with the suggested steps above. We will then lose our cluster setup. This should not be the case. All of the actions taken when unregistering a machine are included in /usr/mailcleaner/bin/unregister_mailcleaner.sh. This does not include disabling an existing cluster. Likewise, it is possible to create a cluster of CE machines, so even if they were removed from the cluster, you could add them again with /usr/mailcleaner/scripts/configuration/slaves.pl (run first on the "master" to enumerate the allowed "slaves", then on each "slave" to connect to the "master"; MYMAILCLEANERPWD in /etc/mailcleaner.conf is the password from each remote host that you need to enter when allowing access/delegating to it). We will lose addons/options. I think this means that we lose Spamhaus and Spamhaus Content and perhaps more. This is true. Alinto will have access to your SpamHaus license as your reseller. However, you can just purchase a license directly. If the RBLs have already been removed, you can run /usr/mailcleaner/install/install_options.sh --spamhaus and provide your license token when prompted. Otherwise, if it is still installed, you can just replace the token in each of the files /usr/mailcleaner/etc/rbls/SPAMHAUS*.cf. Note what the existing token looks like (all lowercase and numeric, around 30(?) characters long). There is another ID that they provide which is much longer, contains capitals, and is not valid for use here. The only other add-on currently being sold should be ESET antivirus. You can also purchase a license from them directly. You'll need your login email address and a key that looks like XXX-XXX-XXX (I think that the required product is "Server Security" which is available in all of the consumer bundles. MailCleaner/Alinto's reseller account is able to license it individually for as little as one host, but it doesn't appears that the consumer licensing is that flexible. If it is not currently installed, then this is time sensitive because the ESET package is hosted by Alinto (I have a backup copy of the package, but the installation steps become a lot more manual if it cannot be downloaded from Alinto by the script). To install it you would run /usr/mailcleaner/install/install_options.sh --eset and follow the prompts. It it is already installed, you should just be able to update the license with /opt/eset/sbin/lic -u ***@***.******@***.***> -p XXX-XXX-XXX. 1. Most important is to keep the cluster setup working. Do you see any posibility for us to block the change to mailcleaner community edition? Change config, delete Files, block IPs, something like that? All access from Alinto should be blocked using the suggested steps. Your machines will be changed to Community Edition, but you won't really lose any significant functionality. Otherwise you can go through all of the manual steps above to effectively unregister without actually unregistering. 1. A filter system is only good if it has access to RBLs and up to date detection methods. Do you see any possibility to keep this running? As noted, you can continue using the MailCleaner RBLs, since they are public, but they will probably go offline soon. The remaining RBLs (eg. SpamCop) will continue to work, including SpamHaus if you get your own license. In the long run, we need a solution that receives ongoing support. If you need assistance applying the suggested step above, or if you need any other support in the future, I'm available to provide support via email and SSH access (I see that you already found my email!) at a rate of $100 CAD/hour. Will there be a way to migrate from MailCleaner to one of your new solutions? Yes! Unless something very odd happens, it should be essentially the same as any MailCleaner -> MailCleaner migration. This means installing a new appliance, stopping MailCleaner, copying /etc/mailcleaner.conf and the contents of /var/mailcleaner/ to the new appliance, then starting the new appliance. For SpamTagger Plus there is likely to be minor variations (eg. the configuration file will need to be named spamtagger.conf on the new machine and a script will probably be necessary to apply necessary database updates) but everything should be portable. How far along are you with development? The majority of the work is done, but it is also a bit of a moving target. Because we currently have an opportunity for quite a clean break from MailCleaner, it is probably the best opportunity I'll ever get to make huge changes and cut a bunch of baggage that MailCleaner has desperately needed for many years. Almost all of the work to simply modernize the existing application code is done, but there are other tasks that I want to complete including a complete overhaul of how images are built and distributed and removing all of the remaining MailCleaner branding. I've been making great progress on the former in this repo<https://github.com/SpamTagger/SpamTagger-Bootc>, however the completion date of that effort is way too difficult to pin down (especially as I'm looking into the extra work necessary to maintain a Debian base instead of migrating to CentOS Stream). At the moment I am not getting paid to do any of this, so I'm not able to devote my full attention to it. I have other responsibilities and some other freelance work keeping me busy a good chunk of the time. However, I do see potential in selling support/development services for SpamTagger as a full-time opportunity if interest is great enough after a general release, so I am quite motivated to keep spending as much time on it as I can. Assuming that there are no more significant delays, I anticipate that I may have images available for testing somewhere around the start of the year (perhaps earlier if I deem it to not be worth the effort to get the images built using Debian, perhaps later if I deem that it is but it is more work than I anticipate). — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#1 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BEOJ7YRNEULN3I6WWBSVQQD35QCRFAVCNFSM6AAAAAB3AJGFPKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKMBQHA3TCOA>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.******@***.***>>

[JohnMertz]

Hi Nicolai,

I sent you a mail with some questions to your mailcleaner@ mail address, because I did not want to have it publicly visible on github. What is the best way to send you private message about mailcleaner related topics?

In general that email address is probably best. I had a brief conversation with a German person named Nicolai back in April, but never hear anything back after my first reply about 4.5 hours after the initial enquiry. Perhaps this was you? I haven't seen anything else more recently that I can find, but I could have been careless and deleted it. Feel free to try again. If the correspondence in April was you, you may need to check that my replies aren't getting blocked.

Alternatively, if you have LinkedIn, you can try to contact me there, but I don't check it very frequently (I don't have the time or desire to be on social media). In time I will look into better ways of making contact available and will hopefully have some sort of private ticketing system for support requests.

Two of my four questions are still relevant for me: b) I've visited the www.spamhaus.org<http://www.spamhaus.org> website several times, but I can't find any way to become a customer directly, nor any information about paid services. I understood from your email that it would be easy to purchase the SPAMHAUS license directly. How does one purchase it?

You need to look at the commercial website (instead of spamtagger.org): https://www.spamhaus.com/data-access/real-time-dns-blocklists/

c) On the ESET website, however, there are various products available for purchase. Is there a specific term for the service/license that one would need to purchase from ESET?

This one is a bit more confusing because ESET's end-user offering seem to be limited to just a handful of bundles rather than individual products. The actual product that you need is "Server Security" which is available in all of the "Small and Mid-size Businesses" bundles: https://www.eset.com/ca/business/small-and-medium/

If you have needs for additional ESET products, you may choose to get a more extensive bundle.

Once I've released the first version of SpamTagger Plus, I'm going to try to get in contact with ESET to set up a new reseller account so that I can provide individual "Server Security" licenses at a better rate.

[HansMeier1983]

Hi John, thank you for your fast response. I am quite sure the Nicolai back in April was me, but we continued our conversion over the last months. Perhaps I answered a mail of yours very late. If a mail from you is very extensive or complex, I do need some time to read carefully. To b) Thanks for the Spamhaus link. I have already submitted the request for the 30 days free trial. I think after the free trial there will be a method to change the account to a paid version. So far so good. To c) Thanks for the ESET link, too. This worked even better! I have already bought a license and activated it on all our there servers. Was it correct to do this on all three servers in the cluster? To d) I write you about d) in private mail. Regards, Nicolai Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) | Geschäftsführer contact.itmc.de/n.roth<http://contact.itmc.de/n.roth> Von: John Mertz ***@***.***> Gesendet: Montag, 29. Dezember 2025 00:34 An: SpamTagger/.github ***@***.***> Cc: Nicolai Roth [itmc GmbH] ***@***.***>; Comment ***@***.***> Betreff: Re: [SpamTagger/.github] 👋 A Welcome Message from John! 👋 (Discussion #1) Hi Nicolai, I sent you a mail with some questions to your mailcleaner@ mail address, because I did not want to have it publicly visible on github. What is the best way to send you private message about mailcleaner related topics? In general that email address is probably best. I had a brief conversation with a German person named Nicolai back in April, but never hear anything back after my first reply about 4.5 hours after the initial enquiry. Perhaps this was you? I haven't seen anything else more recently that I can find, but I could have been careless and deleted it. Feel free to try again. If the correspondence in April was you, you may need to check that my replies aren't getting blocked. Alternatively, if you have LinkedIn, you can try to contact me there, but I don't check it very frequently (I don't have the time or desire to be on social media). In time I will look into better ways of making contact available and will hopefully have some sort of private ticketing system for support requests. Two of my four questions are still relevant for me: b) I've visited the www.spamhaus.org<http://www.spamhaus.org<http://www.spamhaus.org%3Chttp:/www.spamhaus.org>> website several times, but I can't find any way to become a customer directly, nor any information about paid services. I understood from your email that it would be easy to purchase the SPAMHAUS license directly. How does one purchase it? You need to look at the commercial website (instead of spamtagger.org): https://www.spamhaus.com/data-access/real-time-dns-blocklists/ c) On the ESET website, however, there are various products available for purchase. Is there a specific term for the service/license that one would need to purchase from ESET? This one is a bit more confusing because ESET's end-user offering seem to be limited to just a handful of bundles rather than individual products. The actual product that you need is "Server Security<https://www.eset.com/ca/business/solutions/learn-more-about-file-server-security/>" which is available in all of the "Small and Mid-size Businesses" bundles: https://www.eset.com/ca/business/small-and-medium/ If you have needs for additional ESET products, you may choose to get a more extensive bundle. Once I've released the first version of SpamTagger Plus, I'm going to try to get in contact with ESET to set up a new reseller account so that I can provide individual "Server Security" licenses at a better rate. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#1 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BEOJ7YUIABV5U2SVRAWCOD34EBSHNAVCNFSM6AAAAAB3AJGFPKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKMZVHEYDMOI>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.******@***.***>>