Bayes?

Carl Boberg carl.boberg at NRM.SE
Mon Mar 24 09:11:55 GMT 2003


Hmm...
My users usually forward their spam/not spam emails. Does this make a large difference to 
the bayes/sa-learn script? Since they are all using outlook I wonder if there is some
way around those clients not being able to bounce or redirect? Does anybody know?

Best regards 
Carl

>-----Original Message-----
>From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On
>Behalf Of Julian Field
>Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 19:34
>To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>Subject: Re: Bayes?
>
>
>At 18:21 21/03/2003, you wrote:
>>Very interesting!  Two questions:
>>
>>1)  I'm assuming that your users just forward their emails to these
>>addresses.
>
>They "bounce" or "redirect" not "forward". Forwarding a message changes the
>message a lot, and throws away all the headers. Unfortunately it looks like
>Outlook can't redirect/bounce a message at all, which is pretty stupid.
>
>>   Will it make a difference to the bayes filter that the message
>>has been forwarded, or is it just looking at the body of the message?
>
>It's looking at all of it, headers and body.
>
>>2)  Do you have to worry about some kind of locking of the bayes database
>>when running sa-learn, so that sa-learn is not updating it while 
>MailScanner
>>is calling spamassassin to use it at the same time?
>
>The locking is all taken care of for you. Don't worry.
>
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Julian Field [mailto:mailscanner at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK]
>> > Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 9:57 AM
>> > To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>> > Subject: Re: [MAILSCANNER] Bayes?
>> >
>> >
>> > At 14:51 21/03/2003, you wrote:
>> > >Just qurious about spamassassins bayes function in
>> > connection with MS.
>> > >Is MS utilizing the bayes function automatically
>> >
>> > Yes.
>> >
>> > >  or do you have to
>> > >configure something to make it work?
>> >
>> > No.
>> >
>> > >  If so what, and do you have to
>> > >run a "learning session" with it?
>> >
>> > No.
>> >
>> > >  That is, do you have to run some
>> > >definitly SPAM emails and some non SPAM emails through it?
>> >
>> > No.
>> >
>> > MailScanner is using the bayes function automatically.
>> > Uniquely, the bayes
>> > engine in SpamAssassin is "self-learning"; it uses the other rules to
>> > identify messages which have either a very high score or a
>> > very low score,
>> > and it continuously feeds them to the bayes engine itself without you
>> > needing to do anything.
>> >
>> > If you want to teach it when it gets it wrong, you can have it run the
>> > "sa-learn" script to learn about particular messages. I have set up 2
>> > addresses here, "spam" and "notspam". Their mailboxes live on the main
>> > MailScanner server, and people can just redirect wrongly-classified
>> > messages to one of the addresses. Then once an hour the
>> > script below is run
>> > by cron to teach the bayes engine about the messages it got
>> > wrong. For the
>> > script below, I have copied SpamAssassin's "sa-learn" script into the
>> > MailScanner bin directory.
>> >
>> > You should also run a nightly cron job that does a "sa-learn
>> > --rebuild" as
>> > well, to do all the housekeeping the Bayes engine requires.
>> >
>> > #!/bin/sh
>> >
>> > SPAM=/var/mail/spam
>> > NOTSPAM=/var/mail/notspam
>> >
>> > LOGFILE=/var/log/learn.spam.log
>> > PREFS=/opt/MailScanner/etc/spam.assassin.prefs.conf
>> > SALEARN=/opt/MailScanner/bin/sa-learn
>> >
>> > date >> $LOGFILE
>> > if [ -f $SPAM ]; then
>> >    BOX=${SPAM}.processing
>> >    mv $SPAM $BOX
>> >    sleep 5 # Wait for writing current message to complete
>> >    $SALEARN --prefs-file=$PREFS --spam --mbox $BOX >> $LOGFILE 2>&1
>> >    rm -f $BOX
>> > fi
>> >
>> > if [ -f $NOTSPAM ]; then
>> >    BOX=${NOTSPAM}.processing
>> >    mv $NOTSPAM $BOX
>> >    sleep 5 # Wait for writing current message to complete
>> >    $SALEARN --prefs-file=$PREFS --ham --mbox $BOX >> $LOGFILE 2>&1
>> >    rm -f $BOX
>> > fi
>> >
>> > --
>> > Julian Field
>> > www.MailScanner.info
>> > MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support
>> >
>
>--
>Julian Field
>www.MailScanner.info
>Professional Support Services at www.MailScanner.biz
>MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support
>




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