On X-Spam-Status, X-Spam-Flag, X-MailScanner-SpamCheck, and other weirdness

[Jules Field]

On 14/08/2009 20:40, Mauricio Tavares wrote:
> Jules Field wrote:
>> MailScanner does not use any header generated by SpamAssassin. It 
>> does not allow SpamAssassin to modify the message. It adds its own 
>> headers, based on the spam status and report returned by 
>> SpamAssassin. So you won't get the same headers you get from using 
>> spamd or anything like that from your MTA. You will get the headers 
>> that MailScanner adds based on the output of SpamAssassin (which is 
>> basically a report and a spam score number).
>>
>     I thought that MailScanner used X-Spam-Status, which is also used 
> by spamassassin but in a different way.
It will use any header you tell it to, it's totally customisable. You 
can trivially tell it to use X-Spam-Status, just edit the 
MailScanner.conf file and "service MailScanner reload".
>
>> Hope that helps explain it a bit.
>>
>> Jules.
>>
>> On 14/08/2009 17:31, Mauricio Tavares wrote:
>>>     This email does not sound like a question; it is more about 
>>> weird thoughts that are haunting me. Expect then a lot of confusion 
>>> because that is how I am feeling right now. I am just trying to 
>>> figure out what is going on here.
>>>
>>> I have been using X-Spam-Status: as a trigger for my dovecot sieve 
>>> script to move spam into a Spam folder. Playing around with it, I 
>>> found something interesting (at least to me): If I create a proper 
>>> spam email and add to its header something like this:
>>>
>>> X-Spam-Status: No (or maybe or spongebob for that matters)
>>>
>>> and then send the spam to your my server, Mailscanner will properly 
>>> detect it as spam and then edit X-Spam-Status like this:
>>>
>>> X-Spam-Status: No, Yes
>>>
>>> I was going to include my sieve script but what I am trying to 
>>> figure out is something else. In MailScanner.conf we have these two 
>>> lines:
>>>
>>> Spam Actions = deliver header "X-Spam-Status: Yes"
>>> Non Spam Actions = deliver header "X-Spam-Status: No"
>>>
>>> I thought that indicated that if there was a X-Spam-Status header in 
>>> the mail, it would be wiped and replaced with ones of the 
>>> X-Spam-Status headers shown above. Also, it seems that while 
>>> spamassassin would do something like
>>>
>>> X-Spam-Status: spam, SpamAssassin (cached, score=9.645,    required 
>>> 4.7, BAYES_50 0.00, FH_HELO_ENDS_DOT 2.31,    FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK 
>>> 3.12, HTML_MESSAGE 0.90, MSOE_MID_WRONG_CASE 0.82,    
>>> RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_51_100 0.50, RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_E4_51_100 1.50,    
>>> RAZOR2_CHECK 0.50)
>>> X-Spam-Flag: YES
>>>
>>> MailScanner does the same using its own header,
>>>
>>> X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: spam, SpamAssassin (cached, score=9.645, 
>>> required 4.7, BAYES_50 0.00, FH_HELO_ENDS_DOT 2.31, 
>>> FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK 3.12, HTML_MESSAGE 0.90, MSOE_MID_WRONG_CASE 
>>> 0.82,  RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_51_100 0.50, RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_E4_51_100 1.50, 
>>> RAZOR2_CHECK 0.50)
>>> X-Spam-Status: Yes
>>>
>>> So, MailScanner uses X-Spam-Status the same way spamassassin uses 
>>> X-Spam-Flag.
>>
>> Jules
>>
>

Jules

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