Is there anyway an option could be included to give the ability to pause the incoming mail? Do nothing but accept it and do not process the mail? I use an older version of Symantec Antivirus for gateways, pretty much just for this purpose, so that I can pause the flow of mail while we repair any problems inside our network. I don't want to buy the updated version just for this feature and think it could be an extra great feature for spamfilter.

Kevin

That doesn't always work, in our case, we don't use just the default smtp server we use several customer smtp server for customers who don't have their mail hosted with us but have their own smtp server.

The symantec product works great because if we have to do anything upstream from the symantec product we can just pause the mail flow do what we have to do, test and release the mail queue and no one is the wiser and no mail is lost. It's VERY easy to do.

Changing the configuration isn't really an option it's more of a bandaid solution. I need to be able to literally pause the queue while still collecting mail.

for example our mail gateways work liek this.

Spamfilter

Symantec - will check for spam and tag the subject wiht **SPAM**

Mcafee

Spamfilter just checks for **SPAM** and forwards on mail from the quaruntine

Instead of pausing the mailflow at the symantec service I would like to have the first spamfilter service collect mail and do nothing more than that, with the exception of certain spam rules, but even then, I wouldn't want it to commit anything to the database, it would litereally queue everything.

That's what Roberto is describing, you just don't do it with a button.  You do it by editing the "Destination Server", "Name|Port" to an invalid value (or directly in the .ini), click "save settings" and your mail will be queued until you release it by correcting the above changed.

I have used this method several times when working on or installing new mail servers behind spamfilter, once had about 9k mails in the queue, no problems with the mail being delivered once I corrected the setting. 

That's what you don't get. THAT solution doesn't work for me. FOr numerous reasons. I am aware of that solution, but again, it does not work for me, it's one of the reasons why I bought the symantec software to sit behind the spamfilter software. I need it to literally pause the flow of mail not simply changing detination servers.

Roberto can correct me if I'm wrong, but if spamfilter, as you have laid out above, is first in line recieving mail, and has no where to forward the mail to the mail will sit in spamfilter queue until it has a place to go.  If you don't want that instance of spamfilter to do any quarrantining disable all the filters on that instance, THEN all mail would sit in the queue until released.