Evolution + SpamAssassin = less spam in your mailbox

pilla

I've seen some tutorials about how to setup SpamAssassin in the client using Kmail, but not with Evolution. This method does not need server support. People with SpamAssassin installed in their servers may use the X-Spam-Flag to filter email, but those who do not have SpamAssassin installed in their mail servers and don't want to setup all the fetchmail/procmail stuff, can use the following procedure (considering that Evolution is already installed):

1. emerge Mail-SpamAssassin

2. In Evolution,
2.1 create a folder called SPAM
2.2 go to Tools, Filters, incoming filter rules, add a new Rule.
2.3 name it with something meaningfull (like SPAM

)

2.4 In the If box,
2.4.1 select Pipe Message to Shell Command
2.4.2 Enter the command (I use also the --local to reduce bandwidth, see man spamassassin for more info)

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

pilla · Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2002 8:43 pm Post subject:

I am running 1.2.0....

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

Thanks for the tip. This works quite well.
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DesertFox · n00b Joined: 14 Nov 2002 Posts: 53

Thanks for the info. Once I upgraded to 1.2.0, it worked like a charm. I did notice that the ebuild for Mail-SpamAssassin-2.43-r2.ebuild is broken, and I had to install the masked Mail-SpamAssassin-2.43-r3.ebuild to get Spam Assassin to work, but once I did that, it worked great.

absinthe · Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2002 3:30 am Post subject:

Now, if only SpamAssassin was faster... I'm not sure which takes more time... me sorting through my spam, or SA's cpu time doing it for me.

pilla · Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2002 4:03 am Post subject:

There is an option for leaving a spamd running on the background and using a spamc to access it. It may help your performance problem, which I haven't experiencied.

absinthe · Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2002 7:09 am Post subject:

pilla · Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2002 4:10 am Post subject:

You could try spamassassin instead of spamc. I don't see major performance slowdowns, and I am running it in a laptop P3 1.2 GHz (the disk is 4x slower than a desktop disk)

absinthe · Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2002 1:30 pm Post subject:

Matje · Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 1:12 pm Post subject:

I was having problems with my mails and finally found that it was spamassassin that was causing them. Mails would keep coming in again and again. First I thought it was my ISP, but then it started to happen with other accounts too, so I started looking. I deleted all my filters et voila, no more double mails. I added them again and started deleting one by one, and yes it was spamassassin. I guess it was taking spamassassin that long to process that the connection timed out and evolution couldn't send the DELE command to the POP. I added the --local option and now it runs much faster. Could it be that it can't find my proxy settings or something like that?
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pilla · Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 2:38 pm Post subject:

SpamAssassin tries to access some sites to gather and distribute information about your spam mail. I use --local to reduce bandwidth (see my first post, 2.4.2).
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Matje · Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2003 4:12 pm Post subject:

I know that, but I thought it might be so slow because it can't find my proxy. And surfing without it is impossible

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bier · n00b Joined: 10 Dec 2002 Posts: 1

I tried this too but it doesn't work for me .. :-(

When I do a "spamassassin -e < mail" with "mail" being a saved mail it returns a whole report on found tags and a spam-score. That seems all allright to me, except it's more then just a number that evolution might be expecting.

I use evolution 1.2.0 and spamassassin 2.43. My filter in evolution is the same as the example. What can be the problem?

cbrese · Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2003 12:26 am Post subject:

I just set this up and it works great if I leave Evolution running, but if I shut Evolution down and then open it up a few hours latter it really seams to choak on 30 or 40 emails.

I've tried both spamassassin -e and spamc -c. I think I will try to setup spamassassin directly in postfix and then just filter on the X-Spam-Flag header.

cbrese · Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2003 12:32 am Post subject:

Ignore my last comment. I just tried the --local option and now it is much faster. I guess there is a long timeout for the DNS checks.

Reformist · Guru Joined: 06 Oct 2002 Posts: 323

Yes, my mail checking is also much faster with --local on (I get about 150 a day). I have a nice connection, so I think it may have something to do with long DNS timers or something, as suggested in one of the above replies. That's a real shame, because I am all for contributing to a spam database, because I hate this crap.

Heheh I get about 20 letters a day from some prince, or king's window or whateverr in African offering to split some 20$ million account with me if I will only lend my bank account info. Must be a lot of political turnover over there ;-) Some of the spammers are absolute morons; of course a program like this would never work if everyone else is doing it. I think computer noobs buy packages off tv or something, one of those "work from home" schemes that turns their computer into a spam center.
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nouse66 · Apprentice Joined: 09 Jan 2003 Posts: 194

i got spamassassin and razor installed yesterday and they seemed to work fine.
i read this post and decided to switch to using spamd +spamc instead of calling the full spamassassin script from evolution.
since i switched there have been no additions to my razor log file which previously logged every piece of spam i got.
is there something i need to do to re-enable razor or check to see if it's doing anything?

thanks,
aaron

nouse66 · Apprentice Joined: 09 Jan 2003 Posts: 194

ok, well i did some more research and found the answer on the spamassassin mailing list archive.

if anyone is interested ...

all you do is edit your /etc/init.d/spamd adding the -H option to the /usr/bin/spamd in the start function.

i ended up with this:
start() {
ebegin "Starting spamd"
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet \
--exec /usr/bin/spamd -- -d -H -r /var/run/spamd.pid \
${SPAMD_OPTS}
eend $? "Failed to start spamd"
}

i guess that ensures that your home directory path will make it's away to the razor script.
i'm not sure if razor was working or not before i changed that but now my log file is showing activity so it looks like razor is doing it's job.

pmatos · Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2003 9:59 am Post subject:

Won't this work when using SMTP? Why? I'm using SMTP and I tried it but my spam still arrives from server in to my inbox.

Any ideas?

Best regards,

Paulo J. Matos
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charlieg · Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2003 5:34 pm Post subject:

This is handy but it would be nice if there were a way to 'train' spamassassin at the same time...

Perhaps an entry in the context menu or a flag like with Mozilla's mail client.
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Reformist · Guru Joined: 06 Oct 2002 Posts: 323

You can train spamassassin at the same time.

Refer to this post regarding sa-learn usage in general,
http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/evolution/2003-October/033588.html

When something is determined to be spam, instead of just moving it to a spam folder or deleting it, first run it through"sa-learn --spam" and then move it or delete it.

Works great for me, although I usually just accumulate a lot of spam and then run sa-learn on the entire spam folder.
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charlieg · Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2003 1:35 am Post subject:

mallchin · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 9:48 pm Post subject: amavisd-new

I using fetchmail, gotmail, courier, amavisd-new, clamav & spamassassin; took some time to configure but it works great

Firstly courier is proper mail suite including POP3 and SMTP servers, I connect to those to send & recieve mail using evolution. I have courier installed on a spare box, and use fetchmail & gotmail to check my ISP's POP3, and HoTMaiL. They are downloaded and delivered locally via SMTP.

Incoming SMTP traffic is filtered via amavisd-new for spam and virii, the advantage being spamassassin's vigourous scanning has already taken place when I pickup mail via POP3 with evolution. Infected or unwanted mail is forwarded to quarantine mail accounts. Many more options are available to warn the sender, recipient, admin or other about the infection.
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