Jerry Malcolm wrote:
I am trying to add bayes to SA. I see in the docs that there is a
use_bayes parm and the path parm. I made the changes to
/usr/share/spamassassin/local.cf. But I see no change. I am not sure
it's even loading that config file. I've got debug on, and the log
doesn't tell me that it's reading the local.cf file I'm changing.
SA's core rules used to be loaded from /usr/share/spamassassin, but it's
mostly just a last-resort fallback at this point. Active core rules are
loaded from /var/lib/spamassassin, and updated automatically with
sa-update. You're making changes to a file that may not even be looked
at, and if it is it's overridden by files loaded later.
You shouldn't change files in either location, because they'll be
overwritten without notice (on package upgrades, for the files in
/usr/share/spamassassin; on the next ruleset update by sa-update for
/var/lib/spamassassin).
I think I need to go back to the basics. I simply want a 100% site-wide
SA (no per-user anything). I've read of the config docs. It describes
every parameter. But it doesn't really put the big picture together. Is
there a "SpamAssassin for Dummies" doc that describes the command line
args for 'site-wide-only' and also which config file (local.cf?) in
which folder I should be changing?
Your own local configuration for SA should be almost entirely in
/etc/spamassassin or /etc/mail/spamassassin depending on how SA was
packaged. SA will load any file ending with .cf from this directory.
The first few lines of the debug output should show something like:
Nov 22 13:46:46.298 [26759] dbg: generic: Perl 5.020002, PREFIX=/usr,
DEF_RULES_DIR=/usr/share/spamassassin,
LOCAL_RULES_DIR=/etc/spamassassin, LOCAL_STATE_DIR=/var/lib/spamassassin
SA will look for rules in DEF_RULES_DIR, LOCAL_STATE_DIR, then
LOCAL_RULES_DIR, whatever they're set to. Each later directory tree
overrides anything set in an earlier one.
The initial install of SA on AWS Linux EC2 has a SPAMDOPTIONS="-d -c -m5
-H". I was told a few months back in this forum that -H without a
parameter following is not even valid and it applies to per-user stuff.
So I removed the -H. I read that -c creates a user pref file which
sounds like per-user. So I removed that. But the log is telling me it's
loading files from /etc/mail which I thought the docs said was per-user
stuff. Basically, I can't figure out how to make any config changes
that are actually seen by SA.
A few fragments for the spamd daemon arguments should be in
/etc/sysconfig/spamassassin on Red Hat and derivatives like AW Linux.
(The actual file might be spamd; it's been a while since I used RH
systems for SA.)
Make your local changes in this file; like the SA rules, the init
script in /etc/init.d will also be overwritten without notice on a
package upgrade.
So... questions:
-- first just to make SA run as 'site-wide-only', should the
command line args be "-d -m5"? (or do I really need to go back to "-d -c
-m5 -H"?
No, removing those options is OK for your use. You will probably want
to add -x to skip loading per-user configuration.
You may want to add "-u spamd" to make sure spamd is running as its own
unprivileged user. The specific user might be something else - for
instance the Debian packages provide a "debian-spamd" user instead.
You'll have to check /etc/passwd to see if one was created, and what it is.
Check the spamd man page for any other options you might want set.
-- What file should I be changing to adjust config? If it's indeed
/usr/share/spamassassin/local.cf, is there something I can change in
there that I can force something in the log file to assure me that
config parms are really being pulled from here?
Your configuration can go in any .cf file in /etc/mail/spamassassin. By
convention, local.cf should have your major options (sitewide Bayes,
message tagging method, default "this is spam" threshold, etc), but
there's nothing in the SA code that makes it special IIRC.
If you just have a few extra things to add, it's probably easiest to add
them to this file. If you have a long list of things (eg a long local
blacklist and/or whitelist) you may want to put them in different .cf
files for convenient management.
-- Shouldn't "use_bayes 1" cause something to appear in the debug
log saying something about bayes now in use (and something about the
bayes_toks file)?
Only if not overridden by a "later" file. Initially most of the
messages you'll see should indicate that Bayes has not been trained with
enough messages. For sitewide operation you'll need to set bayes_path
or the related database-related options to force SA to use your sitewide
Bayes database instead of a per-user one.
-- Finally, where should I put custom rule files such as KAM.cf so
they are used, but not erased with sa_update?
/etc/mail/spamassassin, alongside local.cf.
If all of this is explained in some user scenario docs, please point me
to them. It's just really tough getting the big picture here especially
when I can't get ANY config changes to make any difference.
Spend a while reading the Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf manpage. Most of the
SA configuration is documented here.
-kgd
