On Thu, 22 Jun 2006, Greg McCann wrote:
...all of the rule files (10_misc.cf, 20_advance_fee.cf,
etc...) get installed in /usr/local/share/spamassassin/
However when I do sa-update, all of the updated rules go
to /var/lib/spamassassin/3.001003/updates_spamassassin_org/,
giving me two complete sets of rules in two different locations.
Yep. It's supposed to be that way. SpamAssassin looks in
/var/lib/spamassassin/{version}/{whatever} first and then in
the install directory. I'm not positive what the reasoning
is behind this, but I believe the idea is probably to avoid
modifying the installed files. After all, you might install
SpamAssassin through some kind of package manager like rpm,
and it could throw off the package manager if you go changing
its files.
Plus it's just better form not to modify the ones that came
with the version you have installed. If something goes awry
and the auto-updated rules get messed up, you can always just
nuke them and fall back to the original ones that came with
the install and have a reasonably-working system.
For what it's worth, I haven't added my own rules (yet), but
I believe those are done in a separate place, so the fact that
one set is substituted for another shouldn't cause problems.
- Logan
