To enable quarantine support simply change the following line in /etc/amavisd/amavisd.conf: $QUARANTINEDIR = undef; # -Q to $QUARANTINEDIR = "$MYHOME/quarantine"; # -Q then restart amavisd. The following will make the change for you: sed -i.orig -e '/\$QUARANTINEDIR =/s,undef,"$MYHOME/quarantine",' \ /etc/amavisd/amavisd.conf PLEASE NOTE: This is intentionally a manual step. Before turning on the quarantine feature of amavisd-new, be sure that there is a sufficient amount of free space on /var/spool/amavisd/quarantine. "Sufficient" depends entirely on your environment. In the default configuration, files in the quarantine directory will be automatically deleted by tmpwatch after 30 days. See /etc/cron.daily/amavisd to adjust this behavior for your environment.