# How effective do you now find Spamassassin v3.x.x?

## trossachs

Having done the upgrade from v2.64 to v3.0.2, I am finding that this new version is missing out a whole load of stuff; much to the annoyance of my users. What has been your experience with the new version?

Any suggestions for improvements?

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## ToeiRei

Spamassassin imho is useless without good rules.

So far about 2K messages are hitting my box each day - Logs, Reports, some Smalltalk and of course spam. With the rules from my_rules_du_jour I can't complain about false pos / negs

I'm running the ~x86 Spamassassin and I can say, the new version seems faster for me. The only problem I am facing are the warnings when a rule-desc. is over 50 char (warning on linting rules).

Rei

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## trossachs

I have just trashed my exisiting database and "sa-learn" a whole new bunch of stuff. I am hopeful, that when some cron jobs run tonight, I will begin to see an improvement. I had no probs with v2.64. In fact I would say that some 99% of spam got caught up. I guess I thought that with a database update, I would see the same results.

Now it's about 60%. I like you get some 2k of spam everyday.

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## mirko_3

If I were you, I'd look into rules_du_jour (it's in portage, masked). Spamassin's memory footprint will get larger, but It'll also be more effective...

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## trossachs

IS there any further config with rules_du_jour, or will Spamassassin recognise this, pick up the new SARE rulesets and auto-config?

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## mirko_3

spamassin will parse all the files in it's config directory, which is where rules_du_jour downloads the new rules; all you have to do is select which rules you wish to download and keep updated

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## trossachs

OK. It was just that I made some changes in the /etc/ruledujours/config + rulesets file and I was just wondering how I would get SA to recognise and implement the changes I had made. I also didn't see any additional reference to "rulesdujours" in my maillog regarding these additional rulesets.

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## trossachs

Well this new addition (rules-du-jour) has been in place for some days now and I have set a cronjob to "sa-learn --spam" every 24 hours, but I am still seeing more spam than I did under v2.64.

What are the main differences between the two and what changes, if any, have any of you guys noticed with the new version?

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## mirko_3

Not me, but then, I don't get a lot of spam. You do have a cron job for your rules_du_jour, right? (/etc/cron.daily/rulesdujour is executable, right?)

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## trossachs

Well I have made it executable, but the file outputs these errors:

```
/var/lib/spamassassin/rules_du_jour: line 14: SARE_REDIRECT: command not found

/var/lib/spamassassin/rules_du_jour: line 15: SARE_BML: command not found

/var/lib/spamassassin/rules_du_jour: line 16: SARE_SPECIFIC: command not found

/var/lib/spamassassin/rules_du_jour: line 19: BLACKLIST: command not found

/var/lib/spamassassin/rules_du_jour: line 26: SARE_REDIRECT_POST300: command not found

/var/lib/spamassassin/rules_du_jour: line 14: SARE_REDIRECT: command not found

/var/lib/spamassassin/rules_du_jour: line 15: SARE_BML: command not found

/var/lib/spamassassin/rules_du_jour: line 16: SARE_SPECIFIC: command not found

/var/lib/spamassassin/rules_du_jour: line 19: BLACKLIST: command not found

/var/lib/spamassassin/rules_du_jour: line 26: SARE_REDIRECT_POST300: command not found

send-mail: Cannot open mail:25

send-mail: Cannot open mail:25

send-mail: Cannot open mail:25
```

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## Xaid

Hi. I found spamassassin 2.x more effective in identifying spam for some reason...I don't have rules du jour installed (and I didnt back then), but it seems that some of the mail that used to be blcoked before (or got a high spam rating) doesn't get anything now (or 1 *).

I cleaned out the sa-learn db in my user's directory but that didn't help much.

btw, I dont have a user set for SA (it drops priv. and runs as user nobody), so It doesnt save any global preferances anywhere (from looking at the logs) so I'm not sure if this is the problem (worked fine before though...).

any hints on what the problem might be?

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## mirko_3

Needless to say, it shouldn't spit out those error messages. Have you edited that file? Configuration should be in /etc/rulesdujour, and other files should be left alone now...

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## trossachs

Xaid, I'm with you. I found that v2.64 was virtually ZERO maintenance. Now I am constantly having to run sa-learn on various mailboxes, but even this does not help. SA just doe snot seem to be learning anything like it used to. I have install this ruesdujour stuff, but like you say, I didn't have to before.

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## petterg

SA 3 runs fine on my server after I figured out where it's auto-learn files were stored and move the files used by SA 2.64 to where SA 3 looks for them. (They're located in a ~/.[subdir] of the user spamd is running as.)

However - the more it learns - the slower it gets! SA does a great job, it just takes too much time.

* Looking for alternatives *

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## djnauk

 *petterg wrote:*   

> However - the more it learns - the slower it gets! SA does a great job, it just takes too much time.
> 
> * Looking for alternatives *

 

I've set mine up to learn all my spam, mailing-lists and personal stuff everynight as s/ham (as required), but was still getting alot of crap though. No false-positives though  :Smile: 

However, after installing dcc (mail-filter/dcc) false-negatives dropped to almost zero and no false-positives either. It's working much better now.

I haven't installed razor either, just dcc seams to be working fine!  :Smile: 

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## trossachs

By using dcc, is there anything else to configure for SA to start using these extra sets of rules? Or will SA just simply recognise the new addition?

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## djnauk

Nope. I think by default spamassassin is set to try and use razor, dcc and pyzor. However, you can enable them in you configs. This is my ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs

```
# generated by http://www.yrex.com/spam/spamconfig.php (version 1.01)

# How many hits before a message is considered spam.

required_hits           5

# Whether to change the subject of suspected spam

rewrite_subject         0

# Text to prepend to subject if rewrite_subject is used

#subject_tag             

# Encapsulate spam in an attachment

report_safe             0

# Use terse version of the spam report

use_terse_report        0

# Enable the Bayes system

use_bayes               1

# Enable Bayes auto-learning

auto_learn              0

# Enable or disable network checks

skip_rbl_checks         0

use_razor2              1

use_dcc                 1

use_pyzor               1

# Mail using languages used in these country codes will not be marked

# as being possibly spam in a foreign language.

# - english 

ok_languages            en

# Mail using locales used in these country codes will not be marked

# as being possibly spam in a foreign language.

ok_locales              en

```

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## trossachs

Do you have a generic location somewhere in /etc or a user_prefs file for each user?

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## djnauk

I don't think there's a problem with putting those options in the master configuration. Although I don't have much experience in configuring SA, I just find that these work for me!  :Smile: 

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## trossachs

Would you know whether SA 3.x.x is able to read from the user_prefs file or is it only now looking at the local.cf?

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## petterg

I followed this great guide when I installed / configured razor, dcc and spamassassin:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=171499&highlight=

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## trossachs

Fingers crossed. I have implemented dcc into the SA config and for the moment at least, my "wayward" spam count is now down to zero as it was with v2.64! Absolutely nothing has got thru since last night. Thanks for the guide petterg, but I already had everything installed that you made mention off and didn't want to start again from scratch.

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## Xaid

I took a quick look at the link that was posted here for setting up dcc+SA and it seems that there isnt any extra steps needed to configure dcc...

I mean, just emerge dcc, and in SA config file make sure I have

use_dcc 1

and thats it...or am I missing something here? because I'm not even sure dcc is being run  :Smile: 

Edit: any btw, is there a problem running dcc as root? would it be a problem if i make it run as "nobody" since SA drops its priv to nobody after it starts.

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