How much does whitelist_from really do?

[Peter Guhl <pg...@siconline.ch>]

Hello

We have a really huge whitelist - all inserted in user_prefs using
"whitelist_from". But I constantly get told that mails from people at
this list got flagged as spam. That makes me wonder... do I have to do
something specific to make sure sa honors "whitelist_from"? Does it only
shift the score or bypass scanning?

Thanks for any help!

Regards
   Peter

Re: How much does whitelist_from really do?

[Matt Barton <ma...@webexc.com>]

Peter Guhl wrote:

> We have a really huge whitelist - all inserted in user_prefs using
> "whitelist_from". But I constantly get told that mails from people at
> this list got flagged as spam. That makes me wonder... do I have to do
> something specific to make sure sa honors "whitelist_from"? Does it only
> shift the score or bypass scanning?

You may want to do a whitelist_to for the spamassassin-users@ address.

-- 
Matt Barton
Webexcellence
PH: 317.423.3548 x22
TF: 800.808.6332 x22
FX: 317.423.8735
matt@webexc.com
www.webexc.com

Re: How much does whitelist_from really do?

[Matt Kettler <mk...@evi-inc.com>]

At 11:59 AM 12/14/2004, Peter Guhl wrote:
>We have a really huge whitelist - all inserted in user_prefs using
>"whitelist_from". But I constantly get told that mails from people at
>this list got flagged as spam. That makes me wonder... do I have to do
>something specific to make sure sa honors "whitelist_from"? Does it only
>shift the score or bypass scanning?

It only shifts the score, but by -100, so that's a pretty hefty shift. 
Unless the message has a GTUBE in it, it should be OK. You should see the 
rule USER_IN_WHITELIST show up for matching emails.


SA has no "bypass" support. If you want to bypass scanning, do that in your 
tool that calls SA in the first place, you'll save more CPU this way than 
if SA did it.


Also make sure SA understands your configfiles... run spamassassin --lint 
to check for syntax errors.. one bad error can cause a lot of your config 
file to get skipped, thus disabling your whitelists.

Re: How much does whitelist_from really do?

[Kelson <ke...@speed.net>]

Peter Guhl wrote:
> We have a really huge whitelist - all inserted in user_prefs using
> "whitelist_from". But I constantly get told that mails from people at
> this list got flagged as spam. That makes me wonder... do I have to do
> something specific to make sure sa honors "whitelist_from"? Does it only
> shift the score or bypass scanning?

It only shifts the scores.  If you want to bypass scanning entirely -- 
which you really should do if you're using Bayes auto-learning or AWL -- 
you need to do that using whatever system you have to call SpamAssassin 
(procmail, mailscanner, mimedefang, etc.)

-- 
Kelson Vibber
SpeedGate Communications <www.speed.net>

RE: How much does whitelist_from really do?

[Bret Miller <br...@wcg.org>]

> We have a really huge whitelist - all inserted in user_prefs using
> "whitelist_from". But I constantly get told that mails from people at
> this list got flagged as spam. That makes me wonder... do I have to do
> something specific to make sure sa honors "whitelist_from"? 
> Does it only shift the score or bypass scanning?

Unless you've changed it, whitelist_from has a score of -100, which it
would be very hard to overrun even with the worst spam. So if messages
are really getting through that match a whitelist_from entry then my
thinking would be either the user_prefs are not being used or you've
lowered the whitelist_from score.

Bret