MailScanner Spam Settings Bug? / Problems with SA 2.50

[Jason Sauve]

I have made a couple observations regarding spam settings in the
MailsCanner.conf file (v4.12-2), could someone offer a second opinion on the
following:
 
1. 
If "Spam Checks = no" and "Use SpamAssassin = yes" then SpamAssassin is not
run at all, and no spam processing is done, the documentation is not very
clear on this point.
 
However if "Spam Checks = yes" and "Use SpamAssassin = yes" then
SpamAssassin is run, but MailScanner also does internal spam checking, and
cannot be disabled simply by setting "Spam List = " and "Spam Domain List =
" or by commenting both out.
 
2.
Maybe this is a bug, but I'm not sure at this point; with SA 2.50 installed;
if you set
    "Spam Checks = yes",
    "Spam List = ", 
    "Spam Domain List = ",
    "Use SpamAssassin = yes" 
 
then the following appears in the log file
 
Feb 24 15:34:25 mailhost MailScanner[5658]: SpamAssassin timed out and was
killed, consecutive failure 1 of 20 
Feb 24 15:34:36 mailhost MailScanner[5658]: RBL Check  timed out and was
killed, consecutive failure 1 of 7 
Feb 24 15:34:52 mailhost MailScanner[5658]: SpamAssassin timed out and was
killed, consecutive failure 2 of 20 
Feb 24 15:35:03 mailhost MailScanner[5658]: RBL Check  timed out and was
killed, consecutive failure 2 of 7 
Feb 24 15:35:19 mailhost MailScanner[5658]: SpamAssassin timed out and was
killed, consecutive failure 3 of 20
 
It would apear that if you change to "Use SpamAssassin = no" , then the RBL
Check timed out messages DO NOT appear in the syslog output. So maybe this
is a bug or some kind of dependency on spam assassin that causes this??? But
if SA times out this should not cause MailScanners internal RBL to timeout
as well. 
 
This dependency on SA is why I suspect you cannot disable internal spam
checking with MailScanner even if you set the Spam List check to null. I
would much rather use SpamAssassin and not use MailScanner for spam checking
at all. 
 
Using the buggy SA 2.50, no emails were getting through the system at all,
and the CPU utilization would jump to 100%. Since then I have uninstalled SA
2.50 and installed SA 2.44 and everything is back to normal. 
 
System configuration is as follows:
 
Perl 5.6.1 (all SA required modules up to date as per CPAN)
Redhat Linux 7.2 (with all RHN updates as of 2002-02-25)
SA 2.44
MailScanner 4.12-2
 
Here are the changes to my MailScanner.conf file, you should be able to read
the output from diff. 
 
# diff MailScanner.conf MailScanner.conf.orig
197c197
< Virus Scanners = sophos
---
> Virus Scanners = none
603c603
< Send Notices = no
---
> Send Notices = yes
655c655
< # Spam List = ORDB-RBL spamcop.net
---
> Spam List = ORDB-RBL Infinite-Monkeys # MAPS-RBL+ costs money (except
.ac.uk)
661c661
< # Spam Domain List = 
---
> #Spam Domain List =
665c665
< Spam List Timeout = 60
---
> Spam List Timeout = 10
672c672
< Max Spam List Timeouts = 5
---
> Max Spam List Timeouts = 7
694c694
< Use SpamAssassin = yes
---
> Use SpamAssassin = no
706c706
< Required SpamAssassin Score = 8
---
> Required SpamAssassin Score = 5
727c727
< SpamAssassin Timeout = 60
---
> SpamAssassin Timeout = 30
733c733
< Max SpamAssassin Timeouts = 10
---
> Max SpamAssassin Timeouts = 20
745c745
< Always Include SpamAssassin Report = yes
---
> Always Include SpamAssassin Report = no
825c825
< Log Spam = yes
---
> Log Spam = no
 
 
Here are the changes to my spam.assassin.prefs.conf file, again using diff
output.
115c115
< score RCVD_IN_BL_SPAMCOP_NET    4
---
> #score RCVD_IN_BL_SPAMCOP_NET    4
 
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