Alpha Testing

We are currently operating this repository in an open Alpha and are accepting feedback from all those interested in checking out the new version.

What to expect from the Alpha

Note: This is a living document. It will updated to add and remove warnings as they are discovered and resolved. Feel free to check back later if the current Alpha experience is not of interest to you.

Currently the Alpha will not function to process mail. We advise you to wait a bit longer if you want to test actual mail flow. You may wish to proceed to help us test other components.

Expect a lot of problems at this time. Currently you will need to install a generic version of Debian 12, then run the bootstrap script to get a MailCleaner installation.

The functionality should regularly improve, so please keep up with the Issues, git pull the latest changes to confirm that your problem still exists, and follow the contributing guide to report outstanding, unreported problems.

Known issues and missing features

• Initial configuration requires polish - Upon running the bootstrap script, several services will fail to start and will require additional manual actions to get working. We recommend waiting to test until this point is resolved.
• No pre-built VM images - As discussed in the installation guide, the Alpha requires a bootstrap installation on top of an existing (dedicated) Debian 12 instance.
• Fewer Exim features - If you have used our current version of MailCleaner, you will likely discover that the version of Exim provided here is missing features (eg. DMARC). We compile our own version of Exim for the current release, but have not yet set up a repository for Bookworm. For now we have provided configuration files with the missing features removed, but will add them back when the mc-exim package becomes available.
• Fail2Ban and blacklists - This feature is being migrated to use nstables via ufw (Uncomplicated Firewall) configuration files. The configuration files are not yet properly generated.
• OCR - We are migrating from FuzzyOCR to a new module, developed in-house, using TesseractOCR and an improved filtering methodology. The module needs to be updated to work with an up-to-date version of the opencv library.
• Migration procedure from Jessie version - There will be a script to ingest a database dump from an existing Jessie server, however this will take some time to test because we are jumping many major versions and changing to the mariadb fork of mysql.
• Update mechanism - This repository is not currently compatible with Updater4MC. The update mechanism is being forked and behaviour will be changed somewhat by the time the final release arrives. Specifically, Community Edition machines will be set to track master for all of the latest updates, while Enterprise Edition will be set to track a new stable branch which will merge changes after a sufficient period of testing by the Community (and our MailCleaner Cloud cluster). Until the final release, updates will simply require a git pull and restart of services, unless otherwise mentioned in commit notes.

Since these features are not explicitly necessary for mail flow or navigation of the product, they are not deemed to be absolutely necessary for the initial Alpha. They will all be included before the Beta release (or Final release, if specifically mentioned).

Functions that have not been tested thoroughly

• Filtering quality
• Most scripted behaviour (releasing from quarantines, creating whitelists from pop-ups, searches, etc.)
• Most system messages (weekly/monthly quarantine reports, virus alerts, watchdogs, etc.)
• Translations
• Much more

These are the areas where we will benefit from as much Community attention as possible.