On 2026-04-14 at 13:57:16 UTC-0400 (Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:57:16 -0500)
Scott Techlist <[email protected]>
is rumored to have said:
Restarting a (new) thread from a few weeks back where I was trying to
get KAM working on an older box. I couldn't get that to work and that
was the impetus to upgrade.
I don't understand how that could have broken, unless the problem was
antique OpenSSH on that old box not supporting secure transfers from the
very modern mcgrail.com servers.
I started a fresh server build to get KAM implemented.
-AlmaLinux release 10.1 (Heliotrope Lion)
-amavis-2.13.1 (20240304)
-SpamAssassin version 4.0.1
- running on Perl version 5.40.2
This was not without some pain. I had to cpanm and build from source
some missing perl modules that are not included in any AL10 dnf
packages to get the base installs missing modules cleared. After
that, I setup the KAM channel and ran into a problem:
On AlmaLinux 10 (and presumably RHEL 10, Rocky 10, etc) the OVAL
plugin is no longer included in the SpamAssassin 4.0.x packages. I
presume due to Red Hat's deprecation of OVAL in favor of CSAF/VEX.
(https://access.redhat.com/security/oval-v2-deprecation-announcement)
OVAL.pm has *never* been part of the official SpamAssassin distribution
and in fact this is the first time I've ever heard of it. I guess it
never caught on...
NOTHING in SpamAssassin as distributed has any dependencies on or
awareness of OVAL or RH's replacements for OVAL.
I have been using the KAM ruleset for many years, blissfully unaware of
OVAL. That may be because the KAM rules channel also does not reference
OVAL in any way that I can find. It also requires no special setup
beyond the documented process of running "sa-update --channel
kam.sa-channels.mcgrail.com --gpgkey 24C063D8" as root (or another user
that can write to your config...) daily.
AS a workaround to the KAM installation:
1. I had added to /etc/mail/spamassassin/v400.pre:
loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::OVAL
/etc/mail/spamassassin/OVAL.pm
How was that in any way related to the KAM ruleset?
Just remove it if you don't have the plugin.
2. In order to clear the error I made a stub ruleset OVAL.pm (thanks
to AI, hopefully it's OK):
Since you didn't put in the effort to write it, I'm not about to waste
any effort on it either. I guarantee that it's useless, because NO ONE
understands it.
[slop elided...]
Is there anything better I can do to resolve? Will what I did break
something or cause the KAM scores to be bad for the OVAL dependent
rules?
What is the *actual* *problem* that you are trying to resolve?
Note that neither the KAM rules channel nor any proprietary plugin from
a distro vendor is an ASF-supported part of SpamAssassin. However, we do
support 3rd-party plugins and rules channels, so if you're having a
*clearly* *defined* *problem* with integrating either, we'd eagerly
help.
--
Bill Cole
[email protected] or [email protected]
(AKA @[email protected] and many *@billmail.scconsult.com
addresses)
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