spam assassin?

[zach]

So I turn this on today in cpanel. And I still get my typical 100 spams a day, but hey! they are now "filtered" with a disclaimer saying "THIS MIGHT BE SPAM"!!

how do I actually use spamassassin to get rid of this spam?

[jason]

Spam Assassin doesn't actually delete spam, it just marks it. When I was using it (I can't remember why I stopped), I set up a rule in my mail client to place anything marked with its signature "***SPAM***" subject line to a folder called "Mystery Meat" . Then I could periodically scan that folder to see if there was anything that I might want to keep. See this thread for info about how to customize Spam Assassin.

--Jason

[zach]

i didn't see anything that stood out in that thread, really, to let the server kill any mail that looks like spam, at least as far as spam assassin is concerned.

dumping into a folder in my mail client is not a solution.

[Darryl]

SpamAssassin adds an "X-Spam-Status" header to all mail it checks, so if you want it to automatically delete mail, setup a rule that checks for the header

X-Spam-Status: Yes

and delete those messages. How you do that depends on your mail client. Horde (the web mail client) has decent rule capabilities. If you have shell access, a better way would eb to use procmail, which appears to be installed on the Jag servers.

[zach]

shell access denied thanks to other wonderful jag users.

I'm in Outlook Express now trying to find a rule that lets me delete mail by flagging X-Spam-Status in headers, but, i don't see anything in OE that lets me define rules set from header info.

i'll try and lobby for them to open up ssh for me again

[jason]

if you open a support ticket they'll open it for you again. They did disable SSH for a few days a while back, but they've since restored it, although now with the somewhat restrictive JailShell.

--Jason

[zach]

alright, now i have ssh working.

what do i do with respect to procmail? i don't mean to come off as snooty, but i'm a unix sa, i just don't have much experience using mail services/daemons. what do i need to do? no need for a kiddie explanation.... thanks!

[poring]

Zach, when you're in Outlook, go to "Tools" -> "Message rules" -> "Mail" -> "New".

In the first window: Check the "Where the message body contains specific words" box
In the 2nd window: check the "Delete it" and the "Mark it as read" boxes.
In the 3rd window: click the "contains specific words" link, then type "This mail is probably spam" and click add. Then click ok, and you're done. You'll never be bothered by spam caught by spamassassin again.

You may also want to have the Deleted folder to be automatically emptied when you exit Outlook too..

[Darryl]

procmail is a mail processor (hence the name). It's a regular app, not a daemon, and is installed on the JagPC servers. See the man pages for 'procmail' and 'procmailrc' for the gory details. Basically, you set up your .procmailrc file (in your home dir) with the rules for processing your mail, then you forward your mail to the procmail executable (via the .forward file). I had trouble with that step. However, I had trouble with the mail forwarding -- we might not be able to use procmail because of the jailshell.

FYI, here's my .procmailrc (taken almost exactly from the man page) with a rule to move all mail identified as spam by SpamAssasin to a folder called SPAM

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin
MAILDIR=$HOME/mail      #you'd better make sure it exists
LOGFILE=$MAILDIR/procmail_log   #recommended

:0:
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
mail/SPAM

The man page for procmail says to create your .forward file with the following (including the quotes), which didn't seem to work with jailshell (it ddn't like, and possibly doesn't support, the 'exec')

"|exec /usr/bin/procmail"

As I said, I gave this a quick try only, so I don't know yet if I can get it to work. Oh, and while you have a non-working .foward file, like the one above, you will not get _any_ mail -- just a heads up

[Darryl]

poring, I think the message body contains that line, not the Subject. Thats how I have IMP/Horde set up anyway.

[poring]

Originally posted by Darryl
poring, I think the message body contains that line, not the Subject. Thats how I have IMP/Horde set up anyway.

Indeed, it's corrected.

[zach]

darryl, where exactly is this .procmailrc file at? you said "in my home dir" but i don't see it either in /home/mydomain or in /.

maybe i should just have the jag admins do it?

[Darryl]

You'll need to create it in /home/mydomain. That's where the .forward goes as well.

As I said above though, I haven't quite gotten this all to work (haven't had much time to invest on it actually); perhaps it just won't work with jailshell. This is how it states to do it in the man pages, and this exact config does work on our Solaris machines with zsh.

[zach]

I opened at ticket on this:

The way Spam Assassin works on Cpanel server is: it is executed at last step before delivering mail into user inbox. So .forward or procmail won't be able to catch spam headers, unfortunately.

Regards,
Masood