ending the spam.assassin.prefs.conf madness.

Julian Field MailScanner at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Mon Nov 21 18:10:35 GMT 2005 

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Therein lies the problem. I could run the "spamassassin" or "sa-learn" 
script to try to find out, but I equally well won't know where they are, 
they may not be on the $PATH (e.g. Solaris).

But if we say I can find the "spamassassin" script (I'll work on that), 
then which of these lines is the one that states the directory I should 
be using? And what should the file be called? Is it local.cf or 
something else? I need to get this right this time.

[26354] dbg: config: using "/etc/mail/spamassassin" for site rules pre files
[26354] dbg: config: read file /etc/mail/spamassassin/init.pre
[26354] dbg: config: using "/usr/share/spamassassin" for sys rules pre files
[26354] dbg: config: using "/usr/share/spamassassin" for default rules dir


Martin Hepworth wrote:

>'normally' the local.cf is in /etc/mail/spamassassin. BUT a lot of package
>builders (as you say in the Solaris case) pop it into different places.
>
>I guess you could say where-ever the init.pre or v<sa-version>.pre are
>located, but trying to find that programmatically could be 'interesting',
>esp in the latter case.
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
>>Behalf Of Julian Field
>>Sent: 21 November 2005 17:49
>>To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>>Subject: Re: [MAILSCANNER] ending the spam.assassin.prefs.conf madness.
>>
>>Okay, I understand that I shouldn't be putting site-wide settings in
>>spam.assassin.prefs.conf as it stands. Is there any way of
>>(a) telling SpamAssassin to use spam.assassin.prefs.conf as a site-wide
>>settings file,
>>or
>>(b) working out automatically exactly where the site-wide settings
>>should go on any given installation. On things like Solaris the correct
>>location is damn near impossible to find. Telling people to go and edit
>>their site-wide SpamAssassin settings file is not much use. I need to be
>>able to work out the precise location of the best file to use, and do
>>the necessary editing for them in the install script. That's why I have
>>always done it the way I have. It pretty much worked okay, and the file
>>was in an easy-to-find location that (1) I could work out and (2) users
>>would be able to find it again later if they needed to change something
>>6 months later when they had forgotten what the install script told them.
>>
>>An ideal solution would be a soft-link in the MailScanner/etc directory
>>to the real location of the file. But I still have to find the real file.
>>
>>All constructive ideas are most welcome.
>>
>>Anthony Peacock wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Hi Matt,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Richard Edge wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>Thanks Matt. As mentioned in another message I am using 3.1 not
>>>>>3.01. It was a typo on my part. I have removed antidrug.cf. The
>>>>>spam.assassin.prefs.conf suggested renaming the local.cf file so
>>>>>that it wouldn't be used. Are you suggesting then that it be used to
>>>>>disable certain SpamAssassin functions/tests?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>I'm suggesting, that the advice in spam.assassin.prefs.conf is
>>>>dangerous. I have no idea why Julian suggests this, as it's a BAD
>>>>IDEA.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Among other things, spam.assassin.prefs.conf should not contain any
>>>>privileged or administrator options.
>>>>
>>>>These options work in this file on some versions of SA, but this is
>>>>largely accidental because currently only the spamd code strictly
>>>>enforces all aspects of the privilege parsing rules.
>>>>
>>>>According to the documentation of spamassassin, many of the options
>>>>that Julian has in spam.assassin.prefs.conf should be ignored, and may
>>>>well be ignored in a future version.
>>>>
>>>>In particular, use_auto_whitelist has proven unreliable if declared in
>>>>spam.assassin.prefs.conf under 3.0.x. It only seems to work if
>>>>declared in the place the docs for 3.0.x tell you it needs to be. At
>>>>the site config level i
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>IMNSHO, spam.assassin.prefs.conf should _ONLY_ contain options that
>>>>you want to use under MailScanner, but not when using the command
>>>>line. Fundamentally this is a user_prefs file, and should be treated
>>>>as such. It is NOT a local.cf replacement.
>>>>
>>>>Using your local.cf for your site-wide settings guarantees that these
>>>>settings will properly apply to sa-learn, and spamassassin --lint,
>>>>without requiring you to remember to use -p
>>>>/etc/MailScanner/spam.assassin.prefs.conf every time.
>>>>
>>>>Very often people add bayes_path statements to
>>>>spam.assassin.prefs.conf, but fail to pass -p to sa-learn. In this
>>>>case, all their manual training becomes useless, as it goes to the
>>>>wrong place.
>>>>
>>>>Currently I've reduced my spam.assassin.prefs.conf to be empty except
>>>>for timeout adjustments.
>>>>
>>>>I'd strongly suggest mailscanner users think long and hard about their
>>>>options placement, and avoid using spam.assassin.prefs.conf for
>>>>settings which really belong in local.cf. Treat this file not as a
>>>>"master config" but as a way of customizing SA's behavior for
>>>>MailScanner.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Thanks for eloquently expressing something that I have been meaning
>>>to write for a little while now.  I got bitten by the advice in the
>>>MailScanner spam.assassin.prefs file, until I realised that it should
>>>be considered a user prefs file, and not a replacement for local.cf.
>>>
>>>I am all for making life easy and not having commands in lots of
>>>different places, but instructing people to delete local.cf is an
>>>oversimplification.  I now have a basically empty spam.assassin.prefs
>>>file, as I want most of the SA configurations to be applied site
>>>wide, whilst running the SA command line tools as well as running
>>>      
>>>
>>>from MailScanner.  And some of the configuration commands are not
>>    
>>
>>>valid in a user prefs file anyway.
>>>
>>>I think it is a very good idea that Julian has created installs that
>>>can install and configure a complete MailScanner, SA, ClamAV and MTA
>>>setup 'out of the box'.  This makes life very easy for people
>>>starting from scratch, who may not have the knowledge and experience
>>>to stitch this all together.  However, this does cause confusion when
>>>somone wants to implement a feature of SA that cannot be configured
>>>in a user prefs file. (There was something recently, but I can't find
>>>it in the archives right now.)
>>>
>>>Please do not take this as a pop at Julian or any of the other
>>>contributors.  I just think it would be better to make the
>>>distinction between SA's different config files, rather than glossing
>>>over them.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>--
>>Julian Field
>>www.MailScanner.info
>>Buy the MailScanner book at www.MailScanner.info/store
>>Professional Support Services at www.MailScanner.biz
>>MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support
>>
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>>
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>
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-- 
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
Buy the MailScanner book at www.MailScanner.info/store
Professional Support Services at www.MailScanner.biz
MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support

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