Top posting for a reason. Does anyone else think that this entire reply should be up on a wiki??? Bob did a great explanation to an often asked question. Mind if I clean it up and post to the wiki, Bob?
--Chris > -----Original Message----- > From: Bob Apthorpe [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 9:05 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Very Slow SA respons v.211 > > > Hi, > > On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 06:19:22 -0600 George Kasica > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 16:54:00 +1300, you wrote: > > > > >At 16:48 10/02/2004, George Kasica wrote: > > >>In the last 3-4 days I'd suddenly seen a massive drop in > speed in SA > > >>2.11 here I occasionally see the an error series like this: > > > > > >Sounds extremely ancient to me, considering 2.63 is the > latest. Any version > > >earlier than 2.6 is going to have "issues" out of the box, > such as trying > > >to query RBL lists that no longer exist, and if you really > are running 2.11 > > >this is likely why... > > > > OK, I'll admit its old, let me ask the next question, how > hard is the > > upgrade to the current 2.63 version. I'm not a perl wizard, but am a > > decent Unix admin. Is there a way to convert the existing rule sets? > > Your existing custom rules or the stock rules that come with > SA? If you > put your custom rules under /etc/mail/spamassassin, they will be > preserved between upgrades. The stock rules that ship with SA will be > upgraded since many rules have been added and dropped as the character > of spam has changed, plus some rules depend on SA code which also may > have changed. If you've added custom rules to the config files under > /usr/share/spamassassin, you'll need to diff those against > the originals > and extract your changes. Custom rules in ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs > will be preserved but like those in /etc/mail/spamassassin, > they'll need > to be reviewed to see if they conflict with the current version of SA. > > From INSTALL: > > ---- > "Note For Users Upgrading From SpamAssassin 2.3x or 2.4x > ------------------------------------------------------- > > SpamAssassin no longer includes code to handle local mail > delivery, as it > was not reliable enough, compared to procmail. So now, if > you relied on > spamassassin to write the mail into your mail folder, you'll have to > change your setup to use procmail as detailed below. If you used > spamassassin to filter your mail and then something else > wrote it into a > folder for you, then you should be fine. > > Support for versions of the optional Mail::Audit module is no longer > included. > > The default mode of tagging (which used to be ***SPAM*** in > the subject > line) no longer takes place. Instead the message is rewritten." > ---- > > One important question: which version of perl do you have? > IIRC, 2.6x is > the last version that will support perl 5.005. Aside from that, you'll > want to freshen your perl installation (perl -MCPAN -e shell; then use > the 'r' command to see what's out of date and upgrade those modules as > prudent.) Then install the prerequisites for 2.63: > > - ExtUtils::MakeMaker >= 5.45 (included in Perl 5.6.1 and later) > - HTML::Parser >= 3.24 (from CPAN) > - Sys::Syslog (from CPAN) > > and probably > > - DB_File (from CPAN, included in many distributions) > - Digest::SHA1 (from CPAN) > - Net::DNS (from CPAN) > - Time::HiRes (from CPAN) > > Maybe it's best to install SA to a local user account, test it, then > upgrade the system once you're comfortable with the new version. > > > I've heard 2.63 needs to get "trained" where as 2.11 did not, how > > hard is this process as we don't save spam here but just mark it and > > thats all. > > You can run SA with or without network tests, and with or without the > Bayesian (statistical) classifier. Training SA is fairly > simple; if you > can save at least 200 pieces each of spam and ham (not-spam), you can > use sa-learn to initially train the Bayesian analyzer. It can also > autolearn, learning from messages above or below some learning > thresholds but this will take much longer. If you don't care, just > disable Bayes. SA should work just fine without it. > > It's pretty easy for people here to tell you to upgrade, it's another > matter completely to upgrade without your users ever knowing. I think > you'll be happier with a more recent version; if you have any > questions, > please ask. > > Good luck! > > -- Bob >
