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07/21/2003 Archived Entry: "SpamAssassin followup lesson"

A followup to this HOWTO doc I wrote:

If you want SpamAssassin, but don't want to mess with your MTA (ie. Postfix, Qmail, Sendmail), in either site-wide or allowing individuals to 'bow out', do the following:

1. Install SpamAssassin (item #2 in the above)
   
2. Make sure that spamd is running ('ps ax |grep spamd'). If not, read up on SpamAssassin to make sure it does. S.A. doesn't seem to do this by default, which is annoying to the extreme.
   
3. Create a file called .procmailrc with the following content

   MAILDIR=$HOME/mail
   DEFAULT=$HOME/mail/Inbox
   LOGFILE=$HOME/mail/proc.log
   # Process all mail through SpamAssassin, wait for that process to finish
   # before continuing.
   # The -s on spamc assigns a size limit. Anything above that size will not
   # be filtered.
   :0fw
   | /usr/local/bin/spamc -s 256000
   

   
   
4. Create a .forward file (as #13 in the above doc)
   
5. For users that do not want mail to be filtered through SpamAssassin, remove the .forward or rename it.

   Check Your Paths! - this is the number one error made! Including the startup file in /etc/init.d/, if you have one.

   Replies: 12 comments

   You have to make sure you are not using Maildirs for this. Postfix by default does not handle Maildirs. Debian does have the patch automaticly installed, and i'm sure a few other linux's do the same. Posted by Gavin @ 07/22/2003 11:13 AM PST

   Wow, one week with no new entries -- is that a record? Posted by Chuk @ 07/29/2003 09:09 AM PST

   Okay, so I'm making a post, so flog me with a wet noodle when you get a chance... :-0) I just wanted to t\say thanks for the hard work and making this process a bit easier for everyone else... Thought you'd appreciate a thank you... Posted by Scott Senay @ 08/05/2003 02:03 PM PST

   how can i make spamassassin work toghether with kmail Posted by Kyrillos @ 08/10/2003 03:49 PM PST

   Thanks for the easy how-to! I now have spamassassin up and running system wide for those who want to use it. =) Posted by matt @ 09/04/2003 01:09 PM PST

   I wish I could find a simple Spamassassin howto for my mailserver topology: I have a Linux box with Postfix running as my Internet email gateway. It has zero user accounts on it. All it does is relay mail in and out of my organization to an internal Lotus Domino server. I do have four different domains hosted on this topology. I've tried several other Postfix + Spamassassin howto's but they tend to be overly complicated and have other unwanted stuff like combining Spamassassin with Amavis and/or Anomy and all I want is simple Postfix + Spamassassin on a relay-only host to filter mail that only flows thru the Linux box, never destined for any uaser mailbox on that machine. Help? Posted by Big Toe @ 10/23/2003 08:57 AM PST

   I have set this up for Maildir style mailboxes and have it working fine. I found I could make it sitewide by creating a /usr/local/etc/procmailrc instead of individual .procmail's but the mail would be stored in the users folder as permissions for only the root user. I use IMP and I noticed that it would allow users to see how many spam messages they had but not see the subject, from and all the usual info so I went back to the setup above. Here is my config, others may find it useful. .procmail MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/new LOGFILE=$HOME/Maildir/proc.log # Process all mail through SpamAssassin, wait for that process to finish # before continuing. # The -s on spamc assigns a size limit. Anything above that size will not # be filtered. :0fw /usr/local/bin/spamc -s 256000 #Move any email flagged as spam to the spam folder :0: * ^X-Spam-Flag: YES $HOME/Maildir/.Spam/new # All mail tagged as spam (eg. with a score higher than the set threshold) # is moved to "spam". :0: * ^X-Spam-Status: Yes $HOME/Maildir/.Spam/new .forward "IFS=' ' && exec /usr/local/bin/procmail exit 75 #username" I changed rewrite subject to 1 in spamassassins local.cf file other than that no other changes and it seems to work well. Would be nice if someone could sort out the permissions issue with the procmailrc file though ;-) I'm guessing there is some kind of command to do it but my knowledge of procmail is limited. Posted by Ryan @ 11/01/2003 05:19 PM PST

   Will this work if postfix is delivering to cyrus imap? Posted by tony @ 11/23/2003 01:54 AM PST

   After being swamped with spam I have tried this and other manuals Spamassassin just does not work for me. That is, spamd is running and spamc does work if I test it manually, but it is not called automatically. I have Fedora 1, set MTA to Postfix, and use Evolution. No headers are ever changed (except manually). The files created or modified have the right locations and permissions: postfixfilter, master.cf, local.cf, .procmailrc and .forward. Also created the spamfilter user, though I do not understand why it is needed (as I am using this as a single-user desktop system). Who has the golden tip on what is wrong with my configuration? Posted by Andre Meyer @ 12/09/2003 01:24 PM PST

   do you have a way how to istall it in kmail? Posted by reinhard @ 12/11/2003 07:48 AM PST

   Thanks for great walk-throughs. It worked for me and very efficient. However, I have a minor problem. Spams flagged and moved into 'spam' directory have three MIME parts -- two duplicate analysis reports and the spam (html or plain) itself. Two analyses seem redundant. Does anyone know why this is happening?? I'm using Mairdir setting suggested here. Posted by Rin @ 01/08/2004 03:48 AM PST

   Hello, I'm running a mail-server that has about 100 active email accounts on it. I currently use Postfix w/Procmail. I'm using Spamassasin to block spam but it seems to be taking up to eleven(11) seconds to process each new incoming email. It works good, but it's taking forever. Is it supposed to take this long? Is there a way I can cut down the time it takes to process each email? Posted by James Lefeu @ 01/13/2004 12:47 PM PST