Here's how we set up our site-wide SpamAssassin bayes database, including the ability for users to train it.

1. Create a new user spamd with home /var/local/lib/spamd.

2. Add "spamd" to /etc/cron.allow.

3. Add the following to ~spamd/.crontab to learn from and delete messages in those shared folders every five minutes (changing MACHINENAME to be the name of the local machine):

   The crontab and other files should be stored in a git repo rather than copied verbatim from this page

   • PATH=/afs/hcoop.net/common/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
     MAILTO=logs@hopper.hcoop.net
     
     # Learn from submitted spam
     0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /var/local/lib/spamd/scripts/learn-spam-wrapper --spam
     # Learn from submitted ham
     5,15,25,35,45,55 * * * * /var/local/lib/spamd/scripts/learn-spam-wrapper --ham
     # Remove any tmp cruft
     3 3 * * * run-in-pagsh --fg clean find /var/local/lib/spamd/Maildir/.SiteHam/tmp -noleaf -type f -delete ; run-in-pagsh --fg clean find /var/local/lib/spamd/Maildir/.SiteSpam/tmp -noleaf -type f -delete
     # Remove stale lock file
     3 4 * * * find /var/local/lib/spamd/ -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -name '.lock' -ctime +2 -delete

     Be sure there's a newline after the last line, or it won't be processed.

4. Copy the learn-spam script from the spam directory of the hcoop "misc" repository into the directory ~spamd/scripts.

5. Checkout a copy of the hcoop spamassassin configuration into /etc/spamassassin from git. If the version of spamassassin is much newer than the version the configuration was created againt, a diff between the two and any relevant changes should be merged into the git repository.

   • cd /etc && git clone /afs/hcoop.net/user/h/hc/hcoop/.hcoop-git/config/spamassassin.git/

6. Modify /etc/default/spamassassin by setting OPTIONS and ENABLEDas follows. The -x prevents spamd from trying to look for per-user configuration, which would be silly because it always runs as the same user here. Without this flag, the cron job triggered every 5 minutes would log an error message, which would lead to an e-mail being sent to the spamd user.

   This also should be stored in a git repository, but is not. Check the current spamd server for the current values if needed.

   • # Change to one to enable spamd
     ENABLED=1
     
     OPTIONS="--create-prefs --max-children 18 --helper-home-dir=/var/local/lib/spamd -u spamd -x -s /var/log/spamd.log -A 69.90.123.67,127.0.0.1 -i 0.0.0.0"
     
     PIDFILE="/var/local/lib/spamd/pid"
     
     CRON=1

7. Make a file called /etc/logrotate.d/spamd with the following contents.

   • /var/log/spamd.log {
             weekly
                     missingok
                     create 0640 root adm
                     rotate 4
                     compress
                     delaycompress
                     sharedscripts
                     postrotate
                     [ -f '/var/local/lib/spamd/pid' ] && (kill -HUP `cat /var/local/lib/spamd/pid`) || exit 0
                     endscript
     }

8. Start the daemon by doing /etc/init.d/spamassassin start. Check /var/log/spamd.log to be sure that it started OK.

9. Install the .crontab entries that you wrote earlier by doing crontab -u spamd ~spamd/.crontab as root. Do this every time that you make changes to ~spamd/.crontab.

1. Edit /etc/courier/shared/index as follows, being sure to separate each column with a single TAB character. The second column is UID, and third column is GID -- consult /etc/passwd and /etc/group to make these match the spamd user and group.

   • spamd   116     119     /var/local/lib/spamd

2. Restart courier's IMAP process: runsv restart courier-imap

3. Test by checking to see if you can access shared.SpamAssassin.SiteHam and shared.SpamAssassin.SiteSpam from IMAP. If not, do maildirmake --add SpamAssassin=~spamd/Maildir ~/Maildir as your normal user from the machine that does courier (and presumably spamassassin as well). You might need to replace ~ with ~USERNAME if you are using sudo to do this, where USERNAME is your normal username.

4. Now copy some spammy mail into the SiteSpam directory, wait 5 minutes, and check to see if the mail got learned and deleted.

5. If so, edit ~spamd/.crontab to pipe the output of sa-learn to /dev/null, and run crontab as specified earlier to propogate this change.

CategorySystemAdministration CategoryObsolete