spam.assassin.prefs.conf real file location

[Kai Schaetzl]

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Julian Field wrote on         Tue, 22 Nov 2005 18:09:41 +0000:

> If we accept that we are having 1 file and a link to it, which should be 
> the real file? 
> The <mailscanner_etc>/spam.assassin.prefs.conf will not be read directly 
> by MailScanner, the <sa_site_path>/mailscanner.cf will be read by 
> SpamAssassin as part of its normal initialisation. 
>  
> <mailscanner_etc>/spam.assassin.prefs.conf is the real file? 
> or 
> <sa_site_path>/mailscanner.cf is the real file? 
>  
> I prefer the first one as it makes the installation a lot easier to do 
> automatically.

Reading the sa-talk list as well I find that people quite often get 
confused with spam.assassin.prefs.conf hanging around in a different area 
than /etc/mail/spamassassin. And they train Bayes etc. and then later ask 
on the list why it doesn't kick in. Usually, because they trained with the 
wrong user or because SA was using the wrong prefs file (it's own). Same 
goes for running spamassassin against a mail. Usually this will result in 
different results then via MailScanner. They don't know that they have to 
specify the prefs file if they use SA or any of its tools outside of 
MailScanner.
I use the /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf file as the spamassassin prefs 
file for MailScanner in all my installations. That completely eliminates 
all these problems. I don't see a reason why it should not be used. If you 
provide a "well-behaving" prefs file you should rename the old local.cf (I 
think SA scans only files with extension of *.cf in that directory) and put 
yours there. This provides for a clean setup where everyone knows where the 
configuration resides.

Kai

-- 
Kai Schätzl, Berlin, Germany
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