How to tell if SpamAssassin Bayasian filtering is working

[Philip Zeigler]

Run the --lint test to see how many ham and spam messages it has.
Spamassassin needs to have at least 200 spam and 200 ham in bayes before it
considers the bayes to be trained.  It ignores the bayes results until then.

Philip

-----Original Message-----
From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info
[mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf Of Jonathan B.
Bayer
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 11:15 AM
To: MailScanner discussion
Subject: How to tell if SpamAssassin Bayasian filtering is working

Hello MailScanner,

I've enabled Bayasian filtering with SpamAssassin.  I've been feeding missed
spam to Spamassassin by hand, and I get reports that it is adding tokens
from the scanned files.  

However, it doesn't seem to have affected the results I'm getting.  I've
looked both at spam and non-spam, and don't see any reference in the headers
to any sort of Bayasian scanning.  

So I'm wondering if it is really doing the Bayasian scanning or not.

I've reproduced all the relevent information below (I think).  Any ideas or
suggestions are welcome.

Thanks in advance.


JBB

I have the following relevant lines in my MailScanner.conf file:

Spam Checks = yes
Use SpamAssassin = yes
Wait During Bayes Rebuild = no
SpamAssassin Site Rules Dir = /etc/mail/spamassassin
SpamAssassin Site Rules Dir = /etc/mail/spamassassin
SpamAssassin Local Rules Dir = 
SpamAssassin Local State Dir = # /var/lib
SpamAssassin Default Rules Dir =
Debug SpamAssassin = no



There is a soft link in place:
/etc/mail/spamassassin/mailscanner.cf -> 
         /etc/MailScanner/spam.assassin.prefs.conf

The file spam.assassin.prefs.conf contains the following:

dns_available yes
use_bayes 1
bayes_path /var/MailScanner/bayes/bayes
 score BAYES_00 -15.0
 score BAYES_05 -5.0
 score BAYES_95 5.0
 score BAYES_99 15.0
 bayes_auto_learn 1
bayes_ignore_header bayerfamily.net-MailScanner
bayes_ignore_header bayerfamily.net-MailScanner-SpamCheck
bayes_ignore_header bayerfamily.net-MailScanner-SpamScore
bayes_ignore_header bayerfamily.net-MailScanner-Information
bayes_auto_expire 0
lock_method flock
use_auto_whitelist 0
use_dcc         0
use_pyzor       0
envelope_sender_header X-MailScanner-From
header   FRIEND_GREETINGS       Subject =~ /you have an E-Card from/i
describe FRIEND_GREETINGS       Nasty E-card from FriendGreetings.com
score    FRIEND_GREETINGS       100.0
header   FRIEND_GREETINGS2      Subject =~ /you have a greeting card from/i
describe FRIEND_GREETINGS2      Nasty E-card from FriendGreetings.com
score    FRIEND_GREETINGS2      100.0


And /var/MailScanner/bayes contains:
-rw-------  1 root root    230 Sep 25 04:03 bayes.mutex
-rw-------  1 root root  49152 Sep 25 04:03 bayes_seen
-rw-------  1 root root 360448 Sep 25 04:03 bayes_toks


JBB
---
Jonathan B. Bayer

mailto:jbayer at bayerfamily.net

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This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.