bigevil usage... Confused - Solution

[Jeff A. Earickson]

Julian,

A huge tip 'o the hat to Bobby Rose for the fix below, which solved
most of my issues with bigevil.cf not working.  Once I added his
fix (and rebuilt SA), I starting getting bigevil tags in my SA
mailscanner syslogging.  Yea!  Mr. Rose's fix should be added to
the next version of MailScanner, maybe with a MailScanner.conf
variable, instead of a hardwired path.

WARNING ABOUT SPAMASSASSIN!!!  I wondered why the lint output from
my SA used /etc/opt/mail/spamassassin for the site_rules, instead of
/etc/mail/spamassassin.  Examination of the Makefile.PL for SA 2.61
reveals that if you install perl in /usr/local, then you get /etc
for SYSCONFDIR (so local.cf goes into /etc/mail/spamassassin).
BUT IF you install perl into /opt (as I do), then SYSCONFDIR gets
defined as /etc/opt (so local.cf goes into /etc/opt/mail/spamassassin).
This change apparently appeared between SA 2.5x and 2.6x.
See lines 560-566 of Makefile.PL.  For MS, your SA build step should be:

perl Makefile.PL SYSCONFDIR=/etc

BEWARE, BEWARE!  So the location of the spamassassin rules dir
should be defined in MailScanner.conf.

Jeff Earickson
Colby College

On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, Rose, Bobby wrote:

> Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 10:32:10 -0500
> From: "Rose, Bobby" <brose at MED.WAYNE.EDU>
> Reply-To: MailScanner mailing list <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: bigevil usage... Confused - Solution
>
> Search the list.  I posted a fixed to MailScanner to get it to read all
> SA cf files in the site-wide folders.  The problem is that SA is
> configured to call a specific cf file and so that is all it calls.  The
> fix is to have modify the SA.pm and add the site_rules_filename option
> so that when MailScanner creates the new SA object it will use both the
> cf file specified in the Mailscanner.conf and the SA site-wide dir.
>
> I posted the change in the hopes that Julian would add it to the next
> release but I don't think he or anyone else realizsed what I was talking
> about when I posted the initial problem.  I'd provide a diff but I
> already got rid of the original.  But here's the line I added to my
> SA.pm.
>
> Before
>     $settings{dont_copy_prefs} = 1; # Removes need for home directory
>     $prefs = MailScanner::Config::Value('spamassassinprefsfile');
> After
>     $settings{dont_copy_prefs} = 1; # Removes need for home directory
>     $settings{site_rules_filename} = "/etc/mail/spamassassin";
>     $prefs = MailScanner::Config::Value('spamassassinprefsfile');
>
> -=Bobby
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
> Behalf Of bnixon
> Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 10:26 AM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: bigevil usage... confused
>
> I have several .cf files in /etc/mail/spamassassin ?(my default site
> location) all of which work. A good test would be to put a typo in the
> bigevil.cf file and run   spamassassin --lint -D   and watch for errors.
>
> It looks to me that the lint command you are running is forcing
> spamassassin to use the mailscanner prefs file as its only rule file.
> Spamassassin will read any .cf file in the site location by default but
> your debug command is not letting it look there -
>
> bn
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
> Behalf Of bnixon
> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 8:25 PM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: bigevil usage... confused
>
> Put it in /etc/mail/spamassassin/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
> Behalf Of Jeff A. Earickson
> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 7:09 PM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: bigevil usage... confused
>
> Gang,
>    I've been following the "bigevil.cf" thread...  I downloaded it and
> put it into /etc/mail/spamassassin, then did
>
> spamassassin -D -p /opt/MailScanner/etc/spam.assassin.prefs.conf --lint
>
> and saw:
>
> debug: using "/opt/perl5/share/spamassassin" for default rules dir
> debug: using "/etc/opt/mail/spamassassin" for site rules dir
> debug: using "/home/admin/jaearick/.spamassassin" for user state dir
> debug: using "/opt/MailScanner/etc/spam.assassin.prefs.conf" for user
> prefs file
>
> with *no* reference to bigevil.cf anywhere in the output.
>
> Hmmm...  I looked in /etc/opt/mail/spamassassin and found another
> local.cf file.  So I blew away this directory and made a symlink for
> this dir pointing to /etc/mail/spamassassin.  This directory contains a
> symlink for local.cf, which points to
> /opt/MailScanner/etc/spam.assassin.prefs.conf
>
> Tried the lint run again, still no reference to bigevil.cf in the
> output.
> Should I see one?  What have I snarled up here?  How to see if bigevil
> is getting used (no references to BigEvilList in the SA syslogging
> either).  Help.
>
> Jeff Earickson
> Colby College
>
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
> MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
> MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support.
>
>
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
> MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
> MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support.
>
>
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
> MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
> MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support.
>