Help installing spamassassin on ubuntu

[Sabiha Fathima <sa...@aghreni.com>]

Hi All,

Am trying to install spamassassin on unbuntu without a smtp running on it.
Is it mandatory to have a smtp server to run spam assassin.

I want to install these modules and call specific subroutine to check my
message for spammy content and give me the results . the calls will be made
from web form.

Am trying to build a tool which accepts a email message and checks it.

Any help with the installation instructions and the details regarding the
set up and modules will be appreciated.


-- 
Thanks and Regards,
Sabiha Fathima

Re: Help installing spamassassin on ubuntu

[Dominic Benson <do...@lenny.cus.org>]

Hi

On 25/08/10 11:30, Sabiha Fathima wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Am trying to install spamassassin on unbuntu without a smtp running on 
> it.
> Is it mandatory to have a smtp server to run spam assassin.

No - on Ubuntu you can just apt-get install spamassassin spamc.
>
> I want to install these modules and call specific subroutine to check 
> my message for spammy content and give me the results . the calls will 
> be made from web form.

cat message | spamc will return the results of the SA analysis. You'd 
really need to include or insert mail headers, unless you have a very 
clear idea indeed about body-only rules, and disable all the header 
related ones.
>
> Am trying to build a tool which accepts a email message and checks it.

Are you *certain* it wouldn't be easier to do this on the mailserver? 
Running mail through SA from amavis/Postfix/Exim/... is really 
straightforward. If the mailserver is under someone else's control, then 
you could use e.g. fetchmail to send it on through a local mailserver.
>
> Any help with the installation instructions and the details regarding 
> the set up and modules will be appreciated.
>
>
> -- 
> Thanks and Regards,
> Sabiha Fathima

Dominic

Re: Help installing spamassassin on ubuntu

[Martin Gregorie <ma...@gregorie.org>]

On Wed, 2010-08-25 at 16:00 +0530, Sabiha Fathima wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Am trying to install spamassassin on unbuntu without a smtp running on
> it. 
> Is it mandatory to have a smtp server to run spam assassin.
> 
No. I run two copies of SA - one on my main mail server for normal
production mail scanning and a second copy on this laptop for rule
testing.

> I want to install these modules and call specific subroutine to check
> my message for spammy content and give me the results . the calls will
> be made from web form.
> 
In the test system:

- spamd is installed as normal but is only started when I need to
  use it.
- I use spamc in a normal user to feed test messages to spamd. I keep my
  test message collection in this user.
- I keep the master copies of locally developed .cf files in same user
  where they're easy to edit. They are under version control as well. 
  I use scripts to: 
     (a) load the .cf files into the test spamd before running lint
         checks and tests
     (b) to install copies of the .cf files on the production mail
         server. This uses scp to install the files and ssh to
         remotely restart spamd

I hope this suggests ideas that will work for you.

Martin