backhair, confused... SOLVED

[Jeff Earickson]

Gang,
   Discovered the problem after a good lunch and more staring at
debug output.  I had for settings:

SpamAssassin Site Rules Dir = /etc/mail/spamassassin
SpamAssassin Local Rules Dir =
SpamAssassin Default Rules Dir =

and got debug output of:

debug: using "/opt/perl5/share/spamassassin" for default rules dir
debug: using "/opt/perl5/etc/mail/spamassassin" for site rules dir

Wrong!  My perl is installed in /opt/perl5, dunno where these pathes
came from.  Changed the two blank config settings above to
"/etc/mail/spamassassin" and the debug output changed to:

debug: using "/etc/mail/spamassassin" for default rules dir
debug: using "/etc/mail/spamassassin" for site rules dir

and now backhair/bigevil/antidrug are being used by SA.  Problem
solved, but I don't know why MS was picking up my perl install path
for blank rules directories.

Jeff Earickson
Colby College

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Jeff Earickson wrote:

> Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 11:57:17 -0500
> From: Jeff Earickson <jaearick at colby.edu>
> Reply-To: MailScanner mailing list <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: bigevil, backhair... STILL confused
>
> Gang,
>
>   Back in late December there was discussion on the list about
> installing and having SA find local rule sets like bigevil.cf, etc.
> Bobby Rose offered the following hack to SA.pm to get extra
> rulesets to be found:
>
> 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');
>
> In private emails with Julian, he warned against this hack.  I've
> also discovered in the list archives that (maybe) the setting
> "SpamAssassin Site Rules Dir" is supposed to handle this.
>
> Well, I have "SpamAssassin Site Rules Dir" defined as
> /etc/mail/spamassassin.  In there I have local.cf as a symlink to
> /opt/MailScanner/etc/spam.assassin.prefs.conf, plus the files
> bigevil.cf, backhair.cf, and antidrug.cf.  Without Rose's hack,
> the bigevil/backhair/antidrug rules never get touched ("ls -lu")
> or used.  Is there some other MailScanner.conf setting I have missed?
> Does this work for other people???  Setup: Solaris 9, MS 4.28.1,
> SA 2.63.
>
> Jeff Earickson
> Colby College
>