Confused about sa-update, directory locations

[Greg McCann <gr...@cambria.com>]

When I first install SA, with...

cd Mail-SpamAssassin-*
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

...all of the rule files (10_misc.cf, 20_advance_fee.cf, etc...) get installed in /usr/local/share/spamassassin/

However when I do sa-update, all of the updated rules go to /var/lib/spamassassin/3.001003/updates_spamassassin_org/, giving me two complete sets of rules in two different locations.

To get the updated rule files to go to the same location as the original rule files, I thought I would do "sa-update --updatedir /usr/local/share/spamassassin/".  But that didn't work either. It put the new rule files in /usr/local/share/spamassassin/updates_spamassassin_org/, so I still had two set of rules in two different locations.

Why doesn't the location of the rules directory default to the same place whether I am installing SA or using sa-update?

Second question - there are a couple of files that the original SA installation puts in /usr/local/share/spamassassin/ but sa-update does not put in /var/lib/spamassassin/....

user_prefs.template
triplets.txt
sa-update-pubkey.txt
languages

Does SA need any of these files, and will it miss them since it will load default configuration data from the /var/lib/spamassassin/... directory first?

(From the man page:

      Default configuration data is loaded from the first existing directory
      in:

      /var/lib/spamassassin/3.001003
      /usr/local/share/spamassassin
      /usr/local/share/spamassassin
      /usr/local/share/spamassassin
      /usr/share/spamassassin)

Thank you.


Greg

Re: Confused about sa-update, directory locations

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

Logan Shaw wrote:
> For what it's worth, I haven't added my own rules (yet), but
> I believe those are done in a separate place, so the fact that
> one set is substituted for another shouldn't cause problems.

Yes, local rules go in their own directory, usually /etc/mail/spamassassin

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

Re: Confused about sa-update, directory locations

[Logan Shaw <ls...@emitinc.com>]

On Thu, 22 Jun 2006, Greg McCann wrote:
> ...all of the rule files (10_misc.cf, 20_advance_fee.cf,
> etc...) get installed in /usr/local/share/spamassassin/
>
> However when I do sa-update, all of the updated rules go
> to /var/lib/spamassassin/3.001003/updates_spamassassin_org/,
> giving me two complete sets of rules in two different locations.

Yep.  It's supposed to be that way.  SpamAssassin looks in
/var/lib/spamassassin/{version}/{whatever} first and then in
the install directory.  I'm not positive what the reasoning
is behind this, but I believe the idea is probably to avoid
modifying the installed files.  After all, you might install
SpamAssassin through some kind of package manager like rpm,
and it could throw off the package manager if you go changing
its files.

Plus it's just better form not to modify the ones that came
with the version you have installed.  If something goes awry
and the auto-updated rules get messed up, you can always just
nuke them and fall back to the original ones that came with
the install and have a reasonably-working system.

For what it's worth, I haven't added my own rules (yet), but
I believe those are done in a separate place, so the fact that
one set is substituted for another shouldn't cause problems.

   - Logan