Oops - forgot to say must run sendmailconfig right after step 9
Ted
On 4/16/2026 12:42 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
The following are the steps I used for this. Every guide I came
across to do it was wrong and useless, however this one:
https://oneuptime.com/blog/post/2026-01-15-configure-spamassassin-ubuntu/view
skipping over the beginning (which was all wrong) the info after the
section "Custom Rules" is not that terrible.
Note the Linux community almost always reaches for postfix because
that is what they know, very few of them use sendmail and often when
you see sendmail mentioned it's actually the postfix sendmail stub
program not the real sendmail.
With that out of the way:
1) Install Ubuntu Server and configure to ssh into it, static IP, add
name to /etc/hosts, ntp time sync it, set correct timezone, hostname,
forward and reverse dns records, setup backups, update, etc.
2) apt-get install sendmail
this installs version 8.18.1 of sendmail.
(8.18.2 is the latest version of sendmail)
3) run the script
sendmailconfig
4) test local delivery
# /usr/sbin/sendmail tedm
From: tedm@localhost
Subject: test
test
.
cat /var/mail/tedm
make sure mail is there
5) Add the IP address on your machines interface you want your machine
to receive mail on
cd /etc/mail
add
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Family=inet, Name=MTA-v4, Port=smtp,
Addr=86.75.30.9')dnl
to sendmail.mc
make
/etc/init.d/sendmail reload
6) Test from another host make sure your getting mail
7) apt install spamassassin
systemctl enable spamd
cd /etc/spamassassin
cp local.cf local.cf.installed
vi local.cf
make your configuration changes and save
systemctl start spamd
8) cd /etc/mail
mkdir -p /etc/mail/spamassassin
vi /etc/mail/spamassassin/spamassassin.m4
Put in:
dnl
dnl Process mail through spamassassin
dnl
define(`confMILTER_MACROS_ENVFROM', `i, {auth_type}, {auth_authen},
{auth_ssf}, {auth_author}, {mail_mailer}, {mail_host}, {mail_addr}, r,
b, v, Z')dnl
define(`confMILTER_MACROS_ENVRCPT', `{auth_type}, r, v, Z')dnl
INPUT_MAIL_FILTER(`spamassassin',
`S=local:/var/run/spamass/spamass.sock, F=, T=C:15m;S:4m;R:4m;E:10m')dnl
9) add this template to the main sendmail.mc
cd /etc/mail
cp sendmail.mc sendmail.mc.nospamassassin
vi sendmail.mc
add:
include(`/etc/mail/spamassassin/spamassassin.m4')dnl
right before MAILER_DEFINITIONS and save
10) install spamass-milter
service spamd stop
apt-get install spamass-milter
cd /etc/default
vi spamass-milter
uncomment and modify:
SOCKETOWNER="spamass-milter:spamass-milter"
save
systemctl enable spamass-milter
service spamd start
systemctl start spamass-milter
As of this writing all of the Ubuntu packages install correct
config/default files for systemctl and so on
The spamassassin package is version 4.0.2 for this version of Ubuntu:
https://packages.ubuntu.com/noble/spamassassin
The spamass-milter is version 0.4.0
https://packages.ubuntu.com/noble/spamass-milter
Note that the Ubuntu packager modified all of the prefixes.
So just downloading it and compiling the latest version will put it in
/usr/local/sbin instead of /usr/sbin and so on for all the other
locations.
Ted
