AMAVISD-NEW(8)

📦
version 2.13.0 · 2 versions
, in debian bookworm, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble

💖 AMAVISD-NEW 💖

okay bestie, welcome to amavisd-new(8) — she lives in the System Manager's Manual and she is literally the moment. let's get into it ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

amavisd-new — the interface between your MTA and virus scanners / content filters. she's the middleman, the group chat admin, the one who checks everyone's vibes before the message gets through 🫶

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

amavisd-new [ -u userid ] [ -g groupid ] [ -c config-file ]...  [ start
| stop | reload | debug | debug-sa | foreground ]

look at her. so many options. so much power. 💅

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so amavisd is a high-performance interface between your message transfer agent (MTA) and your virus scanners and/or spam scanners. high performance. not low performance. we don't do that here 🔥

this is the amavisd-new incarnation of amavisd — a performance-enhanced and feature-enriched version of the original amavisd program. glow-up of the century, no cap 👑

amavisd-new works as a SMTP proxy. so the way this goes: email gets fed to it through SMTP, it gets processed, and then it gets fed back to the MTA through a brand new SMTP connection. it's giving relay but make it fashion 🌈

important detail bestie: there is no buffering to disk by amavis. so it will only report that the transfer was successful after the forwarding MTA has actually accepted the message. no lying about success, we're honest in this house ✋

and also — it's totally possible to use the sendmail milter interface instead of the SMTP proxy method, if that's more your vibe 🦋

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -c configfile — use this specific configuration file instead of using run-parts(8) to hunt for config files in /usr/share/amavis/conf.d and /etc/amavis/conf.d. (this is a Debian extension to Amavisd-new, iykyk 🐧) and guess what — you can specify more than one -c option, and the files will be read in the order given. stacking configs, iconic 💖
  • -u userid — try to switch to that user id. go on, be someone else 🧚
  • -g groupid — try to switch to that group id. same energy, but for groups 🫶
  • start — starts amavisd-new. she's awake, she's here, she's ready 💫
  • stop — stops a running amavisd-new. nap time bestie 😴
  • reload — reloads configuration from the config file. heads up though: this may in fact just restart amavisd-new. so like, it's giving reload but it might be a full restart, don't be surprised 💀
  • debug — runs amavisd-new in debug mode. we love a transparent queen 🔍
  • debug-sa — runs amavisd-new in spamassassin debug mode. specifically spamassassin. very specific. we love specificity 🎯
  • foreground — does not fork to background. she stays right here, in front of you, main character energy, not going anywhere 👑

🦋 FILES 🦋

  • /etc/amavis/amavisd.conf
  • /var/lib/amavis
  • /var/run/amavis/amavisd.pid

these are the spots she hangs out 🏠

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

  • /usr/share/doc/amavisd-new/*

go read the docs bestie, there's lore 📚

💜 AUTHOR 💜

this manual page was written by Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system — but it may be used by others too, generous queen 💖

and that's the whole page bestie!! 🌸 this one's from 2003-01-01, living in the AMAVISD-NEW(8) era, and yeah — she's been iconic since day one. periodt ✨💅🎀

📦 where this page comes from