spamd, user_prefs and required scores

[Phil Smith <ph...@svn.net>]

I'm running SpamAssassin 3.0.0 on a Red Hat Linux 9 system (2.4.27).  The
mail server is running sendmail 8.12.11.

Users turn spamassassin on or off for their accounts by using procmail
rules to call spamc.  There are many users doing this, and it has worked
perfectly until now.  When I upgraded to SA 3.0.0 (following all of the
upgrade notes, etc. carefully), I began to notice that some messages would
arrive in my mailbox with the required number of hits set to different
values.  Sometimes it would be 7 (our system default), othertimes a
different value like 5 or 8.  While trying to solve this, I discovered
that the values for all messages would remain at 7 for a while after the
spamd process was restarted.  Then I discovered where the other scores
were coming from.  There are a few "power users" on the system who have
custom user_prefs files in ~/.spamassassin.  The required scores in these
few user_prefs files were the same scores I was seeing randomly appear in
messages to all users.  At that point, I started tweaking these few
user_prefs files to different values to see what would happen.  Sure
enough, a portion of the messages in my mailbox started to have these
values as the required score.

The first thing I noticed with the upgrade is that SA now runs with some
child processes.  It seems that each child process will "remember" the
required_score value that it picked up from a user_prefs file and apply
that to future messages until a new required_score is written over it. 
Has anyone else experienced this problem?  I will try to set up a separate
installation with a similar software configuration to see if I can
duplicate the problem.

FYI, spamd is running with the following arguments:
spamd -u spamd -d --socketpath=/var/run/spamd -s local4


And our /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf contains the following:

lock_method flock

use_bayes 1

bayes_auto_learn 0

bayes_path /etc/mail/spamassassin/bayes

required_score 7.00

fold_headers 0

report_safe 0

clear_headers
add_header all Status _YESNO_ (_HITS_/_REQD_ _TESTS(,)_ Bayes: _BAYES_)

skip_rbl_checks 1

dns_available no

use_razor2 no



Thanks in advance for any info,

Phil

Re: spamd, user_prefs and required scores

[Phil Smith <ph...@svn.net>]

Justin Mason writes:
> there is one alright -- bug 3826.  could you check and see if that
> matches what you're seeing?
>
> http://bugzilla.spamassassin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3826

That's it, exactly.  The spamd children don't drop the required_score from
user_prefs and apply it to later messages.

I'm going to try adding the spamd flag to restrict the maximum number of
connections per child to 1 as suggested in bug #3826.  We'll see what
happens.

Re: spamd, user_prefs and required scores

[Loren Wilton <lw...@earthlink.net>]

> Has anyone else experienced this problem?  I will try to set up a separate

Yep, you aren't the first.  2-3 other people have commented on this.  I
don't know if there is an official bug on this particular aspect or not;
there are some related problems that do have open bugs.  I'm also not sure
if the dev's have tracked this problem down specifically and have a
solution, although the general area of the problem is known.

Would perhaps be worth checking to see if there is an Official Bug and if
not, submit one to bugzilla.

        Loren