New spamassassin significant install problems

[Robert Moskowitz <rg...@htt-consult.com>]

I am new to this.  I have been running my mail server in various flavors 
for 10+ years. Always trying to do better....

PLATFORM:

Centos 5.0
1Ghz processor 512Mb memory

Mail server:        Scalix 11.1
MTA:                   Sendmail ver. 8.13.8
Spamassassin:   3.1.9
Webmin:             1.360

I followed the Scalix WiKi spamassassin install instructions:  
http://www.scalix.com/wiki/index.php?title=HowTos/SpamAssassin

I am using Thunderbird 1.5.0.12, sending mail has a significant delay.  
The meter just sits there near the beginning for quite some time.  
Often, the sending times out.

I read through much of the spamassassin WiKi.  Nothing on performance 
seems to apply.  When I go into the /var/log/maillog, I catch soom real 
problems.

I enabled DNS checking (dns_available yes) and restarted spamassassin 
via webmin and caught the following in the maillog:

Aug 17 12:13:28 z9m9z spamd[1381]: spamd: connection from 
localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1] at port 48800
Aug 17 12:13:28 z9m9z spamd[1381]: spamd: setuid to root succeeded
Aug 17 12:13:28 z9m9z spamd[1381]: spamd: still running as root: user 
not specified with -u, not found, or set to root, falling back to nobody 
at /usr/bin/spamd line 1161, <GEN4> line 4.

And looking at running processes via webmin I see:

1373     root     12:13     /usr/bin/spamd -d -c -m5 -H -r 
/var/run/spamd.pid
1381     nobody     12:13     spamd child
1382     root     12:13     spamd child

What do I change so that it does not fall back to 'nobody'?

Now this MIGHT explain something else I am seeing in maillog:

Aug 17 12:48:16 z9m9z spamd[1381]: mkdir /root/.spamassassin: Permission 
denied at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/Mail/SpamAssassin.pm line 1536
Aug 17 12:48:16 z9m9z spamd[1381]: locker: safe_lock: cannot create tmp 
lockfile 
/root/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.lock.z9m9z.htt-consult.com.1381 for 
/root/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.lock: Permission denied
Aug 17 12:48:16 z9m9z spamd[1381]: auto-whitelist: open of 
auto-whitelist file failed: locker: safe_lock: cannot create tmp 
lockfile 
/root/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.lock.z9m9z.htt-consult.com.1381 for 
/root/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.lock: Permission denied

Please lend me a hand in cleaning what looks to be a very basic set of 
install problems.