Comments on: SpamAssassin for Dreamhost (2.61 revision)

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for posting this updated guide. I have a Dreamhost shell account, but for some reason I can’t seem to run sa-learn from the command line (I want to retrain the Bayesian filter on some of the messages that it incorrectly tagged as “ham”). sa-learn does appear in my sausr/local/bin directory, but when I try to run it I get the message “Command cannot be found”. I was under the impression that sa-learn gets installed automatically - is there something else that I need to do to get this working?

Thanks!

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I think I figured out what was causing the problem. I thought that I could just type in sa-learn at the command line, but I needed to specify the path to the sa-learn installed location. Seems to be working now.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Hello, Thank you for preparing this helpful article.

What is the syntax of the spam.rc file? I’ve got it open in a text editor, but I have no idea how to turn on ‘verbose mode’ or set logging to ‘all’. Thanks in advance!

By: william

william — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

If you put the SA bin directory at the end of your $PATH, you can just type “sa-learn” instead of specifying the full path.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Re: Matt, format of spam.rc file

spam.rc is just an included file for procmail… try doing a ‘man procmail’ for more info, or go to http://tinyurl.com/ytalv for procmail documentation.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

This is very helpful, thank you.

Could you clarify two things for me please?

1) How does this work if one hosts multiple domains at DreamHost? Can one arrange to have the change from the default (Razor) alter only one of the hosted domains, or is it an all-or-nothing deal?

2) Will the change affect people who are not shell or ftp users but just have m####### email acccounts? Is there a way to control this on a user-by-user or domain-by-domain basis?

By: Mike Steinbaugh

Mike Steinbaugh — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Unfortunately, this tutorial only works for shell and FTP accounts — the m####### mail accounts only have Razor filtering. As for multiple domains, its an all or nothing kind of thing since the e-mail is going to your account and that isn’t dependent on the domain.

By: BobS

BobS — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Mike, Thanks! Worked great for SA 2.63 too.

Michael, On multiple domains, my experience is a little different than Mike’s. Maybe the difference is I used different shell Users for each domain. I had two domains setup to use the server’s SA 2.20 (without Razor previously turned on thru panel). When I installed SA2.63 in my home on one domain, it did NOT effect the other domain.

On razor, it seems to be working some, although mostly just piling on extra score for things SA would’ve tagged as spam anyway. Not sure it’s working “right.” I put stuff into user_prefs from http://www.yrex.com/spam/spamconfig.php and a couple rules into .procmailrc:

# filter 0 - first tag message with razor
:0 Wc
| razor-check

:0 Waf
| formail -A "X-Razor2-Warning: SPAM."

Haven’t seen any sign of the 2nd one doing anything…

By: BobS

BobS — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

One other minor comment - It’s quicker to get the install tar.gz file by using wget while ssh’d to the server, rather than download/upload. Just paste the URL into the command line.

By: Nik

Nik — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

If I install SpamAssassin, will that be enabled for all email accounts in my domain, or will it only work for the one account I install it for?

By: Mike Steinbaugh

Mike Steinbaugh — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Following my instructions, that will only activate it for your user account. There is no way to do a domain-wide install on Dreamhost’s servers.

By: Fred Lewis

Fred Lewis — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Hi, would anyone here please comment on how well Spam Assasin works versus Razor? I get about 60-70 spams per day and currently Razor is catching only about 28 percent of them. I have never used a shell account before but I think I might be able to stumble my way through the very helpfull directions on this site. But is it worth it? Also, I think some Dreamhost users would be willing to pay a small setup fee to have Spam Assasin installed for them by a Dreamhost staff member. Just a thought. Again, aassuming it’s better than Razor. Thanks.

By: Jonathan Webb

Jonathan Webb — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I installed SpamAssassin 3.02 today, your pages on setup were helpful. I'm curious as to why you make so many subdirectories (sausr, saetc, .procmail, and .spamassassin)? For my install, I put everything in ~/.spamassassin and it seems to be working fine. By everything, I mean all of the SpamAssasin application files, as well as the 'spam.rc' and 'user_prefs' files you've provided.

I built the SpamAssassin makefile using:

perl ./Makefile.PL PREFIX=~/.spamassassin

Then edited the include file in my ~/.procmailrc to:

INCLUDERC=$HOME/.spamassassin/spam.rc

And edited the filter in my ~/.spamassassin/spam.rc:

:0fw: spamassassin.lock | $HOME/.spamassassin/local/bin/spamassassin

Additionally there were some issues with SpamAssassin and the current versions of the perl Net::DNS module and razor2 on dreamhost. I added the following lines to my ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs and it seems to be working fine:

dns_available yes use_razor2 0

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

After having problems installing Spamassassin 3.0.1 on Dreamhost I got 2.64 off old.spamassassin.org and followed this guide for the third time. However it appears with 2.64 you need to run sa-learn –rebuild before running any sa-learns for the first time. Could just have been my messed up install but I didn’t have this problem with 2.63 and this guide.

By: Mike Steinbaugh

Mike Steinbaugh — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

This guide is no longer relevant. Dreamhost webmail2 now includes SpamAssassin support, so compiling your own local copy is unnecessary.

By: rough around the edges

rough around the edges — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Spam spam spam spam

Wellferchrissakes. SpamAssassin is still only working on one out of the three accounts. This is probably because I have only the faintest clue what I'm doing. I've read Webspiffy's guide to installing SpamAssassin at Dreamhost (Dreamhost being my webho...