SaveMyModem

Current version 1.0rc2

warning: config files changed AGAIN in 0.15

What is This?
SaveMyModem is a anti-spam, mail-shaper, delete-on-server software thought for users who have a dialup connection and are sick and tired of downloading 1MB a day of spam and Win32-worm-attached messages. Since now it supports only pop3 accounts, and smtp accounts for complaining.

Have a look here for an article describing smm.

Why this software exists?
There are some other delete-on-server mail-filter programs, like mailfilter, but I've not found one with all these functions:

• portable (it runs natively on Linux and Windows)
• complex rules with logic operators (and,or,...)
• extended regular expressions match
• rules can use the message size (beware of large executable files)
• black list check for spammers
• interactive mode (to test and improve your rules)
• batch mode (if you trust your rules)
• UIDL database (if you use the "keep messages on server" pop3 feature)
• APOP (secure pop3 authentication)
• plugin architecture(other mail filters/mail protocols can be easily added)
• high configurable bandwidth usage (you can choose how many lines/bytes you want to download and check of each message)
• bounce message(simulate your mailbox is unavailable)
• multithreaded download(avoids slow DNS / pop3 servers)
• SpamAssassin based check(mix the power of spamassassin with smm lightweight bandwidth usage)

Recently (on 5 February 2003) I dicovered mailwasher, that is a closed-source software that says : "I'm freeware and spyware free". Superficially smm can be mistaken for an open-source clone of mailwasher. I've not taken any ideas from it and smm has been developed without knowing the existence of mailwasher.

Screen Shots
A view of the interactive interface

• Main window
• Log window

Plugin list
All the plugins are packed with smm.

• Inspector: Regular expression based checks.
• Yahoopops: Start/Stop Yahoopops with one click.
• Dummy: A stupid but bug free plugin. That's true. Belive me!
• Rblcheck: Checks if the sender of the message is a spammer using blacklists.
• Pop3: Interface between smm and a pop3 server.
• Spamassassin: Checks the partially downloaded mail with SpamAssassin

Why plugins?

• open source development: open source is a great thing, but is hard to keep control over a software made by a lot of people. Usually the open source development process is "anarchic", but since this software is firstly made by me, I'd like to keep control over it; in simple words I want to look at all the code. I love when someone sends me patches, and I hate when I send someone my patches and he integrates them totally changing them. So plugins are a good way to allow people to expand the software, writing code in theyr own way, without making me mad to find what they have changed.
• stability: smm is 15918 lines (version 1.0rc2):
  • ~ 27% is real smm code.
  • ~ 17% is glade code.
  • ~ 21% is smm_libs code.
  • ~ 33% is plugin code.
  ~ 21% of the code is well tested since smm_libs is old code used in other applications, ~ 17% is made by glade that is probably better than me in writing gtk code. The real smm is only 4405 lines! Some plugins integrate code made by glade. Each plugin is small and easy to test. You don't need to use all plugins. You surely know that a small software is probably more stable than a big one, and a software achitecture like this one is not the usual hell.
• new features: With a plugin you can add new features without changing smm core code, and you can use your own language (the only requested thing is a simple C interface, nobody cares if the plugin calls an external python/perl/ocaml/C++/... software).
• fun: I write software for fun, and I've never used plugins before smm. So it is interesting to me.

Multithread
Multithreaded mail download speeds up the download process since it connects simultaneously to all your pop3 accounts. This avoids big network latencies, like hostname resolution via DNS or connection to an hi-loaded server. Under Linux this approach makes possible to redraw the guy during the download process, and this cuts out the annoying guy freeze. Under windows this is not possible because of a "conflict" between gtk and threads, so the GUI may freeze, but the download speed is increased.

SpamAssassin
SpamAssassin is probably the best way to protect yourself from spam. Smm can use the powerful spamassassin engine on the partially downloaded messages. Yes! You can check your mail with spamassassin without downloading the whole message. With this plugin smm adds to its ligthweigth bandwidth usage the power of spamassassin! Enjoy.

• smm-spamassassin-howto (also included in the README)

Sorry for win32 users, but smm-1.0pre4 doesn't include the spamassassin plugin, since there is much to do to make smm+spamassassin work under windows :(
I'll work on this next month (maybe).

Configuration
Now both pop3 and smtp configuration is made by a user friendly gui. Hopefully you will not need to read the manual, but if you are in trouble...

• This is the README included in each distribution. It is also a little manual.

In ~/.smm/ (Unix) or the program directory (Win32) there are some other files. A detailed description of configuration files is here.

Download
To use this software you need gtk+-1.2. The Win32 version contains them.
All files and ChangeLog are on:

• smm-1.0rc2 download page at SourceForge.net

I putted on an unofficial debian repository for smm on woody. You shoud add these lines to your sources.list
deb http://tassi.web.cs.unibo.it/debian/smm ./
deb-src http://tassi.web.cs.unibo.it/debian/smm ./

CVS
To checkout smm type (using a bash shell and ssh):
export CVS_RSH=ssh
cvs -z3 -d:ext:USERNAME@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/savemymodem checkout smm
If you don't like ssh, you can use the pserver following SourceForge's CVS documentation.

• This is the web interface to smm CVS repository

License
This software is under GPL license. No warranties!

Wishes (TODO list in priority order)

• spamassassin plugin (win32 port)
• change version to 1.0
• try to port to win32 the linux-only features (gtk/pthread) [hard]
• gtk2 [hard]
• add a more complex config window to yahoopops, rblcheck [boaring]
• rblcheck supports name resolution, while now is always used with an ip. [useless]

Thanks
Special thanks to: Gtk team for a good and portable toolkit, Linus for the OS, George J. Carrette for the gnu_regex.dll, Andrew Lynch and Daniel Lemire for some help on the pop3 plugin, Kivilcim Hindistan for writing an amazing article about smm and all the other guys who helped me using and debugging smm.