spamassassin returning 255 hits

[Kurt Yoder]

Hello list

I've been using mailscanner for awhile, and having it check for spam using
spamassassin. Recently I started noticing that spamassassin was frequently
timing out and being killed, even though I have a 40 timeout and this has
been sufficient for most mail before. Restarting spamd did not help, so I
upgraded Spamassassin.

Now mailscanner always says spamassassin is returning 255 hits and reports
everything as spam. I run spamassassin in daemon mode and have checked
test messages using the "spamc" spamassassin client. My test messages
using spamc are scanned correctly and return a normal, non-255 number. So
why does mailscanner always think spamassassin is returning 255?

Software info:
Debian Linux, woody
Mailscanner 3.12.5 (old, but I'm afraid to upgrade it in case I break
something)
Spamassassin 2.20 (debian package 2.20-1woody)
Sendmail 8.12.1 (debian package 8.12.1-5; modified to work correctly with
mailscanner)

--
Kurt Yoder
Sport & Health network administrator