Upgrading MailScanner on an rpm based system is not complicated as long as you read the messages on the screen.
First off go to the MailScanner download section and get the version you want to upgrade to. The second one in the list is the rpm version for RedHat and derivatives.
Normally there is a choice of “stable” and “beta” downloads. What’s the difference? The stable has been tested more thoroughly by beta testers and is unlikely to cause any issues on your system. The beta release may not be as thoroughly tested and is not really aimed at the “faint hearted”. Put it another way, if you are not extremely comfortable with managing MailScanner don’t use the beta release 
I would recommend that you download any installers into a specific directory in /home, for example I use /home/blacknight to store them. DO NOT download the installer to /etc/MailScanner
Let’s begin:
cd /home/blacknight (edit this to taste)
wget http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/files/4/rpm/MailScanner-4.34.8-4.rpm.tar.gz (change URL to the most recent version / the version you want to install)
tar -zxvf MailScanner-4.34.8-4.rpm.tar.gz (change to file you have downloaded)
cd MailScanner* MailScanner.new
this will read in the “new” config file and “intelligently” append any new option directives to your existing config which will create a new file called MailScanner.new
You can compare the two files using the “diff” command if you want, but the output of the upgrade script is usually quite verbose.
We then need to overwrite the “old” config file with the new one:
mv -f MailScanner.conf MailScanner.old
mv -f MailScanner.new MailScanner.conf
Now restart MailScanner:
/etc/init.d/MailScanner restart
If you want to see exactly what you are using try this:
MailScanner -v
which will give you a quite verbose breakdown of all the various modules and addons in use on your system
Enjoy!
Upgrading MailScanner – rpm based system
