[Techtalk] spam filters again

[Raquel]

On Mon, 13 Nov 2006 02:48:02 -0800
Maria McKinley <maria at shadlen.org> wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> So, I have been playing a little bit with spamassasin, and things
> are  going so-so. I have turned on auto-learning, and I started
> using  sa-learn. Sa-learn seems to work, although it often tells
> me Learned  tokens from 0 message(s) (0 message(s) examined), but
> I think this is  just because I don't have enough messages
> collected yet - it does  sometimes say it has learned. But, the
> auto-learning doesn't seem to be  working, and I get messages like
> this in the logs:
> 
> Nov 12 06:26:36 ella spamd[27507]: mkdir /nonexistent: Permission
> denied  at /usr/share/perl5/Mail/SpamAssassin.pm line 1530
> Nov 12 06:26:36 ella spamd[27507]: locker: safe_lock: cannot
> create tmp  lockfile 
> /nonexistent/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.lock.ella.shadlen.org.2
> 750 7 for /nonexistent/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.lock: No such
> file or  directory
> 
> I did some googling, and it seems to have something to do with my 
> running spamassassin as user nobody. I found one mail-list thread
> that  seemed relevant, and it said:
> 
> If you're not doing per-user configs, create yourself a spamd
> user, and  pass that to spamd's -u, then use that user for your
> sa-learning, and  housing your user_prefs, etc.
> 
> But, I'm not really sure what it means to pass that to spamd's -u,
> or  what he is talking about re:user_prefs.
> 
> Why would the smapd user be better than using nobody? Do you who
> are  running spamassassin run it as nobody or someone else?
> Looking around on  the web, it looks like quite a few people use
> nobody, so I'm not sure  why they aren't having the same problems.
> Maybe they just aren't using  auto-learning? Does anyone have any
> advice about where to go from here?
> 
> Thanks a bunch,
> Maria
> 
> Oh, some more info:
> 
> I am running this with postfix, and it is on debian.

Maria,

Below is my /etc/default/spamassassin file showing the options I use
when starting spamassassin

============================
# Change to one to enable spamd
ENABLED=1

# Options
# See man spamd for possible options. The -d option is automatically
# added.
OPTIONS="-c -m 10"

# Set nice level of spamd
NICE="--nicelevel 15"
============================

Then in my /etc/procmailrc:

============================
# Send through SpamAssassin
DROPPRIVS=yes
:0fw
* < 256000
| /usr/bin/spamc
============================

I use spamassassin on my mail server running Debian Sarge.

-- 
Raquel
============================================================
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is
the source of all true art and science.  He to whom this emotion is
a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead:  his eyes are closed.
  --Albert Einstein