Procmail/spamassassin Weirdness

[gabeanderson]

I just moved to TCH this week from another host. At old host, I had procmail & spamassassin running just fine together. But here @ TCH, I'm having trouble getting them to work simultaneously. When I activate spamassassin via the cpanel, it seems to work OK. I do know how to configure it on my own, though, so when I deactivate in the cpanel and try to set it up through procmail, it doesn't really seem to work. Here are some of the problems I'm having:

 

- spam is not getting caught (in current setup)

- procmail filters are only sort of working (test emails to myself are being routed correctly, but external emails are not)

- only some email shows up in my procmail log (mostly test messages to myself)

 

Here's my setup:

 

1) .forward file in home directory containing 1 line, quotes included:

>"|/usr/bin/procmail -t"

 

2) .procmailrc config file in home directory with some standard setup stuff including the following:

>PMDIR=$HOME/procmail

MAILDIR=$HOME/mail/gabe <----- the mail account I've set up, which is different than my account's user name, which I suspect may be part of the problem

INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/rc.spamassassin

# Messages that fall through all your procmail recipes are delivered
# to your default INBOX
:0
$HOME/mail/gabe/inbox

 

3) rc.spamassassin in $HOME/procmail:

>:0fw
|/usr/bin/spamassassin -a

:0e
{
   EXITCODE=$?
}

:0
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
/dev/null
# or whatever folder you want to use

 

Thoughts? Am I missing something?

 

Thanks,

Gabe

[gabeanderson]

anyone? i'm still having this problem. am i the only one using procmail at TCH?? (who checks the message boards, that is. )

 

-gabe

[KevinW]

I don't use procmail myself -- just so you know we're not ignoring you on purpose!

 

:-)

kw

[rayners]

Well, the example .forward from the SpamAssassin site goes something like this (I don't use a .forward file myself):

>"|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #user"

 

I don't use procmail here, but I do use it and SpamAssassin on my home machine. Oddly enough, after looking though my config files, I can't seem to figure out where SpamAssassin is actually running. I know it's working, because most of the spam I get is routed to my caughtspam folder. I suppose using spamc/spamd instead of spamassassin may have something to do with it.

 

All I've got in my rc.spam is:

>:0:
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
caughtspam

[gabeanderson]

Thanks for the reply and input, David. I tried reconfiguring procmail and spamassassin per your suggestion and closely followed the steps on spamassassin.org. Still no luck. I wonder if I'd have more luck with spamd?

 

-Gabe

 

P.S. Great MT site and plugins! I'll have to check some of those out.

[rayners]

Well, spamd is still part of the whole SpamAssassin package, it just operates a little differently.

 

In looking through the mailer's config on the server I use, it would seem that it uses the spamc/spamd already (if you have activated it through CPanel), so you should be able to just filter based on the X-Spam-Status header without having to run spamassassin beforehand. I'll have to look into the .foward/procmail issue. But you did say it seems that some mail was making it through to procmail?

 

So how have you tested procmail here?

[gabeanderson]

Yes, it seems that procmail is only sort of working. And even that my rc.spamassassin file is only picking up some of the spam when I also have spamassassin enabled via the cpanel. But when I deactivate SA via the cpanel, the x-spam status (and other details) don't show up in the header.

 

Currently, I do have SA enabled via cpanel and also have procmail and rc.spamassassin filters active. I also have a test filter for test@**** to go to a test mailbox. Here's a snippet from my log file:

 

From grl17angelwaaa@aol.com Thu Mar 13 12:18:03 2003

Subject: Be Refinance free... Free online quote AA

Folder: /dev/null 1425

From MYLOGIN@MYSERVER.totalchoicehosting.com Thu Mar 13 12:46:28 2003

Subject: testing to test

Folder: in-test

 

The in-test filter tells me that the recipe file I've included for my mailing lists is working (rc.lists). I also know this to be true since emails from mailing lists ARE going where they should.

 

The email from grl17angelwaaa@aol.com sent to /dev/null tells me that it was caught by the rc.spamassassin file I have connected to procmail (since I have that mail going to /dev/null) as opposed to being caught by the cpanel-activated SA.

 

Confusing, right?

 

I've turned on verbose logging for a bit to keep an eye out for incoming spam to determine exactly what it's doing in case that will help me get to the bottom of this.

 

Other thoughts?

 

Thanks again,

Gabe

[gabeanderson]

OK, so here's an example (with verbose logging on) of some spam that was caught by SA via procmail (with changed login and mailbox names):

 

>procmail: [16747] Thu Mar 13 13:02:07 2003
procmail: Assigning "MAILDIR=/home/UNIXLOGIN/mail/MYMAILBOX"
procmail: Assigning "INCLUDERC=/home/UNIXLOGIN/procmail/rc.spamassassin"
procmail: Executing "/usr/bin/spamassassin,-a"
procmail: [16747] Thu Mar 13 13:02:08 2003
procmail: Match on "^X-Spam-Status: Yes"
procmail: Assigning "LASTFOLDER=/dev/null"
procmail: Opening "/dev/null"
procmail: Notified comsat: "UNIXLOGIN@0:/dev/null"
From carlysantilli@clerk.com Thu Mar 13 13:02:07 2003
Subject: Try this out
 Folder: /dev/null

 

Now the weird thing is that test emails to myself from internal & external accounts are (A) not showing up in the log file (all email should) and ( not showing up with x-spam headers. Along those lines, here's an example of spam (with headers intact) that just showed up in my inbox. Notice the lack of x-spam headers:

 

>Return-path: <mdskmepprjl@redopti.com>
Envelope-to: MYADDRESS@****
Delivery-date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 13:09:16 -0500
Received: from redopti.com ([216.19.163.136])
       by MYSERVER.totalchoicehosting.com with smtp (Exim 3.36 #1)
       id 18tX8m-00062C-00
       for MYADDRESSS@****; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 13:09:16 -0500
To: MYADDRESS@****
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 12:09:59 -0500
Message-ID: <1047575399.7235@redopti.com>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; I; SCO_SV 3.2 i386)
From: Amateurs Only <mdSkMePpRjL@redopti.com>
Reply-To: <mdSkMePpRjL@redopti.com>
Subject: Win $10,000 - Poetry Contest
X-MimeOLE: Prodigy Compatibility V 4.cde6ea37 or later
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html

 

So why is some email being picked up by procmail and other email not?

 

Thanks,

Gabe