December 27, 2022 Roberto Puzzanghera 28 comments
SpamAssassin is a mature, widely-deployed open source project that serves as a mail filter to identify Spam. SpamAssassin uses a variety of mechanisms including header and text analysis, Bayesian filtering, DNS blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases. SpamAssassin runs on a server, and filters spam before it reaches your mailbox.
spamassassin
to version 4.0.xYou have detailed info in a separated page here.
Create the spamd
user and group, prepare config and log dirs:
mkdir -p /etc/mail/spamassassin /home/spamd /var/log/spamassassin groupadd spamd useradd -g spamd -d /home/spamd spamd chown -R spamd:spamd /home/spamd
Finally install spamassassin
via cpan
perl -MCPAN -e shell o conf commit prerequisites_policy ask install Mail::SpamAssassin quit
These modules are missing and must be installed from CPAN. Some of them have dependencies as well...
At the end this is how I have installed everything. Reply yes if dependencies are found, install in this order and force install when needed.
perl -MCPAN -e shell o conf prerequisites_policy ask force notest install Socket6 IO::Socket IO::Socket::INET6 LWP MD5 CPAN::DistnameInfo Mail::DKIM
Installed prerequisites of Net::DNS:
force notest install Test::More MIME::Base64 Digest::MD5 Digest::HMAC_MD5 Net::IP
Continue installing these modules (always from CPAN):
force notest install Net::Ping Net::DNS Time::HiRes Digest::SHA1 Getopt::Long Digest::Nilsimsa URI::Escape HTML::Parser HTTP::Date IO::Zlib Archive::Tar Mail::SPF force notest install Mail::SPF::Query Net::Ident IO::Socket::SSL Mail::DomainKeys Mail::DKIM LWP::UserAgent HTTP::Date Encode::Detect BSD::Resource force notest install Storable DB_File Net::SMTP BerkeleyDB force notest install Geo::IP IO::Socket::IP Net::Patricia force notest install Mail::DMARC::PurePerl DBD::SQLite
Finally, if everything is ok install spamassassin
and Razor
via CPAN
force notest install Mail::SpamAssassin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Razor2
I had to skip the tests because of many errors... anyway it works.
We have installed the Razor2
perl package that we will see in the next page.
You can find the config files into /etc/mail/spamassassin
> cd /etc/mail/spamassassin > ls init.pre local.cf v310.pre v312.pre v320.pre v330.pre v340.pre v341.pre v342.pre v343.pre v400.pre
# Add *****SPAM***** to the Subject header of spam e-mails # rewrite_header Subject *****SPAM***** # put here your subnet trusted_networks 10.0.0. # Set the threshold at which a message is considered spam (default: 5.0) required_score 5.0 ###################### extracttext ifplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::ExtractText extracttext_use pdftotext .pdf application/pdf extracttext_use docx2txt .docx application/docx extracttext_use antiword .doc application/(?:vnd\.?)?ms-?word.* extracttext_use unrtf .doc .rtf application/rtf text/rtf extracttext_use odt2txt .odt .ott application/.*?opendocument.*text extracttext_use odt2txt .sdw .stw application/(?:x-)?soffice application/(?:x-)?starwriter extracttext_use tesseract .jpg .png .bmp .tif .tiff image/(?:jpeg|png|x-ms-bmp|tiff) add_header all ExtractText-Flags _EXTRACTTEXTFLAGS_ header PDF_NO_TEXT X-ExtractText-Flags =~ /\bpdftotext_NoText\b/ describe PDF_NO_TEXT PDF without text score PDF_NO_TEXT 0.001 header DOC_NO_TEXT X-ExtractText-Flags =~ /\b(?:antiword|openxml|unrtf|odt2txt)_NoText\b/ describe DOC_NO_TEXT Document without text score DOC_NO_TEXT 0.001 header EXTRACTTEXT exists:X-ExtractText-Flags describe EXTRACTTEXT Email processed by extracttext plugin score EXTRACTTEXT 0.001 endif
# RelayCountry - add metadata for Bayes learning, marking the countries # a message was relayed through # # Note: This requires the IP::Country::Fast Perl module # loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::RelayCountry # URIDNSBL - look up URLs found in the message against several DNS # blocklists. # loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIDNSBL # Hashcash - perform hashcash verification. # loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Hashcash # SPF - perform SPF verification. # loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::SPF
Load all new plugin which come with SA v.4
loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::ExtractText loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::DecodeShortURLs loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::DMARC
sa-update
sa-update
updates the rules (it requires gpg 1.4
). Before running spamassassin
for the first time download the rules:
sa-update
Add to your crontab this line to update the rules once a day
# spamassassin update 30 3 * * * /usr/local/bin/sa-update --nogpg -v &
The -v
option will produce an email notification to postmaster.
Run this debug command. If you get no error you are ready to run the daemon.
sudo -u spamd -H spamassassin -D --lint
Do not quit spamd
with ctrl+C
, because the next test with spamc
will have to connect to it.
Open another terminal and check if the headers are inserted:
echo -e "From: myself@mymailserver.net\nTo:myfriend@domain.net\nSubject: test\n\n" | spamc
Received: from localhost by qmail.mymailserver.net
with SpamAssassin (version 3.3.1);
Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:18:37 +0100
From: myself@mymailserver.net
To: myfriend@domain.net
Subject: test
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-04-18) on qmail.mymailserver.net
X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Level: *****
X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=5.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_99,FREEMAIL_FROM,
MISSING_DATE,MISSING_MID,NO_RECEIVED,NO_RELAYS,TVD_SPACE_RATIO,
T_TO_NO_BRKTS_FREEMAIL autolearn=no version=3.3.1
Download the startup script
cd /usr/local/bin wget https://notes.sagredo.eu/files/qmail/spamdctl chmod +x spamdctl
You have to replace the IP of your firewall and check that the path where you daemon has been installed (/usr/local/bin/spamd
or /usr/local/bin/spamd
) matches the one in the run script.
NB: in what follows <external-IP/firewall-IP> is the IP address of your mail server, as seen from the internet.
#!/bin/bash # # Spamd init script # # August, 2th 2003 # Martin Ostlund, nomicon # Modified slightly by Troy Belding for Qmailrocks - February 23, 2004 # # Modified by Roberto Puzzanghera - September 02, 2014 # November 17, 2020: moved log file to /var/log/spamassassin/spamd.log IP=<external-IP/firewall-IP> DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/spamd NAME=spamd SNAME=spamdctl DESC="SpamAssassin Mail Filter Daemon" LOGFILE=/var/log/spamassassin/spamd.log PIDFILE="/var/run/$NAME.pid" PNAME="spamd" DOPTIONS="-x -u spamd -A 127.0.0.1,::1,${IP} -s $LOGFILE -H /home/spamd -d --pidfile=$PIDFILE" KILL="/bin/kill" KILLALL="/bin/killall" # Defaults - don''t touch, edit /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf ENABLED=0 OPTIONS="" set -e case "$1" in start) echo -n "Starting $DESC: " $DAEMON $OPTIONS $DOPTIONS echo "$NAME." ;; stop) echo -n "Stopping $DESC: " $KILL -9 `cat $PIDFILE` /bin/rm $PIDFILE echo "$NAME." ;; restart|force-reload) echo -n "Restarting $DESC: " $0 stop $0 start echo "$NAME." ;; *) ME=/usr/local/bin/$SNAME echo "Usage: $ME {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2 exit 1 ;; esac exit 0
Now check that spamd
is running:
> spamdctl start > ps axfu root 1859 0.1 3.4 139360 61044 ? Ss 19:00 0:01 /usr/bin/spamd -x -u spamd -A 127.0.0.1,<external-IP> -H /home/spamd -d --pidfile=/var/run/spamd.pid spamd 1860 0.0 3.2 139360 58984 ? S 19:00 0:00 \_ spamd child spamd 1861 0.0 3.2 139360 58984 ? S 19:00 0:00 \_ spamd child
Type spamd -c
to learn how to use spamd
. See also http://spamassassin.apache.org/full/3.4.x/doc/spamd.html
To start spamassassin
at boot time put your startup script in your rc.local
:
/usr/local/bin/spamdctl start &
Create a file /etc/logrotate.d/spamd
like this (slackware) to rotate daily your spamd
logs:
cat > /etc/logrotate.d/spamd << __EOF__ /var/log/spamassassin/spamd.log /var/log/spamassassin/razor-agent.log { su root apache rotate 5 daily missingok notifempty delaycompress postrotate [ -f '/var/run/spamd.pid' ] && (kill -HUP `cat /var/run/spamd.pid`) || exit 0 endscript } __EOF__
Be aware that we have already setup the logrotate for the log file or Razor
, which we'll see in the next page.
qq_temporary_problem_(#4.3.0)
June 2, 2023 06:32
qq_temporary_problem_(#4.3.0)
June 1, 2023 21:18
qq_temporary_problem_(#4.3.0)
May 31, 2023 18:22
qq_temporary_problem_(#4.3.0)
May 31, 2023 14:42
qq_temporary_problem_(#4.3.0)
May 31, 2023 14:33
Thank you! for all the documentation, patches and support
May 26, 2023 08:42
free(): double free detected in tcache 2: /var/www/qmail/cgi-bin/qmailadmin
May 17, 2023 15:25
free(): double free detected in tcache 2: /var/www/qmail/cgi-bin/qmailadmin
May 17, 2023 07:46
Tags
apache clamav dkim dovecot ezmlm fail2ban hacks lamp letsencrypt linux linux-vserver lxc mariadb mediawiki mozilla mysql openboard owncloud patches php proftpd qmail qmail to postfix qmail-spp qmailadmin rbl roundcube rsync sieve simscan slackware solr spamassassin spf ssh ssl surbl tcprules tex ucspi-tcp vpopmail vqadmin
Comments
Update to spamdctl script
Gabriel Torres August 24, 2021 23:04
Hi Roberto,
After upgrading our OS here to the latest version, spamd stopped working. Upon further inspection, I found this in the log file:
This meant that spamd was listening on 127.0.0.1 but not at ::1 (IPv6 version of 127.0.0.1). Therefore, I replaced IP= with:
and the problem was gone.
Just a small note for you to upgrade the script to support both 127.0.0.1 and ::1.
Cheers.
Reply | Permalink
Update to spamdctl script
Roberto Puzzanghera Gabriel Torres August 25, 2021 09:57
Thank you.
Probably you have to adjust for ipv6 dovecot as well...
Reply | Permalink
GEOIP Perl Module
kittonian June 16, 2020 19:47
For anyone still having issues with GEOIP or GEOIP2, I had to manually patch the file with the help of some freenode people.
Here's the link to the patch: https://github.com/neilgierman/awstats/compare/GeoIP2...Grinnz:patch-1
Reply | Permalink
Create .spamassassin/ dir
Gabriel Torres July 13, 2019 15:03
Here I had to manually create /etc/mail/spamassassin/.spamassassin/ and chown spamd:spamd otherwise I would see error messages in the log files saying that the tx-reputation file couldn't be created.
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SA scans only from external emails how to scan local emails?
munku January 12, 2018 01:49
Hi,
Spamassassin is installed correctly and is working fine for years and still is. While spamassassin scans incoming email from external sources, it does not scan emails that is being send locally, (from local to local or local to external domains). Is there a way to make it scan local emails as well? I tried modifying tcp rules to include simscan for local IP addresses but it still does not work.
thanks
Reply | Permalink
How to get SA scan local emails?
Roberto Puzzanghera munku January 12, 2018 18:04
Try to recompile simscan adding
to your configure. This should "turn on spam scanning for authenticated users (default no)."
Reply | Permalink
got error
kwa January 7, 2018 14:40
installed everithing, but got this error (slackware current)
anybody knows where to grab..
Reply | Permalink
got error
Roberto Puzzanghera kwa January 7, 2018 19:03
Let me understand... you upgraded perl and then your installed modules stopped to work?
Reply | Permalink
SSL and AUTH
Nicolas November 3, 2016 09:03
Hello,
Being a long time qmail user I recently wanted to switch to full SSL. Unfortunately I cannot succeed having both SSL and AUTH working at same time.
When using stunnel, it just creates an openrelay : any login/pass is considered as OK (all vars are the same as for normal smtp)
and stunnel_smtpd.conf
When using sslserver, I've no openrelay, but I don't get AUTH on prompt (I've well exported the SMTPAUTH var)
Has anybody succeeded having SSL and AUTH at same time ?
Reply | Permalink
I think I did manage to have
mizzio Nicolas November 11, 2016 11:59
I think I did manage to have SSL on 465 with AUTH. I had to play with the run file of the specific service (on my system, /var/qmail/service/smtpd-465/run). Can you post yours ?
Reply | Permalink
I don't use SSL 465
roberto puzzanghera mizzio November 11, 2016 14:23
I don't use SSL 465
Reply | Permalink
spamdctl DOPTIONS for IPv6
John D Trolinger July 14, 2016 00:12
Spamassassin 3.4.1 was not working. I was getting spamd.log hits
warn: spamd: unauthorized connection from ::1 [::1]:52080 to port 783, fd 5 at /usr/local/bin/spamd line 1600.
and spamd was not working at all.
I added ::1 in the spamdctl file like so:
DOPTIONS="-x -u spamd -A 127.0.0.1,::1 -s /var/log/spamd.log -H /home/spamd -d -c --pidfile=$PIDFILE"
Reply | Permalink
I think you have to check
roberto puzzanghera John D Trolinger July 14, 2016 09:26
I think you have to check that spamd is listening on IPv6 as well and eventually add a "-i [::1]:783" option to your spamdctl. Look here for details http://spamassassin.apache.org/full/3.4.x/doc/spamd.html
Reply | Permalink
IPv6
John roberto puzzanghera July 14, 2016 23:06
Roberto,
We have a new email server for 300 people thanks to your guide. Being able to use Roundcube with PGP was the key piece. I had to keep the old qmail / sqmail with the PGP plugin up until today.
IPv6 is working great and spamassassin is doing the job.
I sent you a couple of coffee's and we thank you for keeping the awesome qmail alive.
John D. Trolinger
Reply | Permalink
spamassassin error
rudi durieux February 23, 2016 10:41
Hi,
I have this error on load :
Thanks
Reply | Permalink
spamassassin error
Ivelin Topalov rudi durieux February 8, 2018 15:25
the problem is missing geoip-perl-api - solve like this:
Reply | Permalink
spamassassin error
Roberto Puzzanghera Ivelin Topalov February 8, 2018 16:19
GEO:IP is already mentioned above among the packages that must be installed via CPAN...
Reply | Permalink
I would try to see which
roberto puzzanghera rudi durieux February 23, 2016 13:51
I would try to see which module is missing looking inside that file/line
Reply | Permalink
did you installed GEO:IP?
roberto puzzanghera rudi durieux February 23, 2016 12:01
did you installed GEO:IP?
Reply | Permalink
I have this in cpan
rudi durieux roberto puzzanghera February 23, 2016 12:14
I have this in cpan
install Geo::IP
Geo::IP is up to date (1.45).
Reply | Permalink
Geo::IP
John D Trolinger rudi durieux July 14, 2016 00:27
I had to disable loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URILocalBL in v341.pre to get rid of this error in the spamd.log
error: Can't locate loadable object for module Geo::IP in @INC
Reply | Permalink
Geo::IP
J John D Trolinger February 2, 2023 00:48
I had the same issue. It was resolved by installing GeoIP2 and uninstall IP::GeoIP. Spamd may complain about missing Class::XSAccessor, after installing it there was no more error.
Reply | Permalink
Change DB Spamassassin
Arturo May 10, 2015 13:10
For update Spamassassin 3.4.1 is necesary update the db (in my case):
ALTER TABLE `awl` ADD signedby VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '' AFTER totscore;
Regards
Reply | Permalink
Disable Spamassassin
Fabiano Heringer April 29, 2014 14:55
How can I disable the use of spamassassin? Just uninstalling it?
Thanks!
Reply | Permalink
no, just edit
roberto puzzanghera Fabiano Heringer April 29, 2014 14:59
no, just edit /var/qmail/control/simcontrol and put spam=no. update the simcontrol after that:
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Many thanks
3rensho June 27, 2011 09:07
Wow, just found this post yesterday when I wanted to install Spamassassin on my Slackware64-current box. I can't thank you enough for this superb post. Grazie mille!
Reply | Permalink
Geo::IP plug not working
catalin 3rensho March 30, 2014 23:20
Thank you for a great tutorial.
I was wondering did you manage to make the new Geo::IP plug in working. I have installed from cpan and updated (geoiplookup works) but spamassassin doesn't seems to take that in consideration when I block a country. I have enable it from init.pre. Any ideea what can be?
Thanks
Reply | Permalink
I don't use that plugin
roberto puzzanghera catalin March 31, 2014 13:44
Sorry, I don't use that plugin
Reply | Permalink