MailScanner.conf and spam.assassin.prefs.conf consistency

[Scott Silva]

David Lee spake the following on 9/19/2007 1:09 AM:
> On Tue, 18 Sep 2007, Julian Field wrote:
> 
>> David Lee wrote:
>> [...]
>>> I realise that SA needs to see the fully expanded form (thus different at
>>> every "org"), but could the sys.admin's version (default common across all
>>> "org"s) read "X-%org-name%-...", which MS/SA/something expand up for SA?
>>>
>>> Just a thought.
>>>
>> The only thing I could do would be to parse the file and generate a new
>> one, but this would need to be put in /etc/mail/spamassassin, and it's
>> rather a cardinal sin to overwrite anything in /etc, stuff like that
>> should be in /var. But I'm not sure how to tell SpamAssassin to add
>> somewhere under /var to the list of directories it reads for admin-level
>> settings.
> 
> Thanks for the reply.
> 
> [ Reminder:  What I'm thinking of is along the lines of the MS package
> delivering a master, default "source" file containing "X-%org-name%..."
> then some procedure generating and maintaining the SA "production" file
> with those "%...%" variables expanded. ]
> 
> There is decent precedent for source and production variants both to be
> alongside each other under "/etc";  namely sendmail's "aliases" and
> "aliases.db" (and other similar ".db"  derivative files).
> 
> The maintenance procedure might then be something (for instance) in MS's
> periodic reload machinery.
> 
> More "blue sky" (day-dreaming):  Might there be other MS/SA-related files
> that could benefit from such a "%...%" expansion mechanism?
> 
> 
How about a sync_spamassassin_prefs script that you can run that;
1) checks the lines
2) offers to fix them for you, using sed or whatever Julian would like to work 
with.
3) It could also add and remove things (with permission) or just warn of 
options that are less than stellar, according to another file with sensible 
defaults in it. Sort of like the recent slowness of the completewhois lookups.

That way, if you don't want it, you don't have to run it. It could be similar 
to the upgrade_mailscanner_conf script.

-- 

MailScanner is like deodorant...
You hope everybody uses it, and
you notice quickly if they don't!!!!