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 /home/spamd.

2. Perform the following as spamd:

   1. cd /home/spamd

   2. maildirmake -S Maildir, to create the shared SpamAssassin mailbox.

   3. maildirmake -f SiteSpam -s write Maildir, to create a writable folder for misclassified spam.

   4. maildirmake -f SiteHam -s write Maildir, to create a writable folder for misclassified ham.

3. Add the following to spamd's crontab to learn from and delete messages in those shared folders every five minutes:

   • 0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * sa-learn --spam --dir /home/spamd/Maildir/.SiteSpam/cur >/dev/null; cd /home/spamd/Maildir/.SiteSpam/cur ; ls | xargs -r rm
     0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * sa-learn --ham --dir /home/spamd/Maildir/.SiteHam/cur >/dev/null; cd /home/spamd/Maildir/.SiteHam/cur ; ls | xargs -r rm

     The funny xargs-based way of deleting files is important, because ls has a hard limit on how many files it can handle, which we learned the hard way! Also, be sure there's a newline after the last line, or it won't be processed.

4. Modify /etc/spamassassin/local.cf with the directive:

   • bayes_path /home/spamd/

5. Modify /etc/default/spamassassin by adding -u spamd -x to OPTIONS. 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.

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