Whitelisting question

[Andy Norris <an...@tireswing.net>]

We're migrating from one server to another. Both now have the same versions 
of SpamAssassin (2.64) and MailScanner running.

We had all our whitelisting on the old server going on in 
/etc/MailScanner/rules/spam.whitelist.rules.

Those listed in that file on our new server are not being recognized. I've 
restarted the spamd service, and have even rebooted.

I am adding those listings on the new server to the file 
/usr/share/spamassassin/60_whitelist.cf. I'm pulling at straws at this 
point as people having their newsletters flagged as spam get madder at me 
day by day!

Am I on the right path, or is there a secret I should know -- a gotcha -- 
that would make one install of the same version on the same OS (RedHat) so 
vastly different from one server to another?

Thanks very much,

Andy Norris

Re: Whitelisting question

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

At 11:20 AM 9/23/2004, Andy Norris wrote:
>We're migrating from one server to another. Both now have the same 
>versions of SpamAssassin (2.64) and MailScanner running.
>
>We had all our whitelisting on the old server going on in 
>/etc/MailScanner/rules/spam.whitelist.rules.
>
>Those listed in that file on our new server are not being recognized. I've 
>restarted the spamd service, and have even rebooted.

1) if you're using mailscanner, you don't need spamd, so don't bother 
running it. MailScanner invokes SA directly at the perl code level.

2) the spam.whitelist.rules file is implemented by mailscanner, not SA, so 
I'd suggest asking about that file on the MailScanner list

3) make sure you're not doing some sort of double-scanning by calling SA 
via MailScanner and procmail at the same time. 

Re: Whitelisting question

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

At 11:20 AM 9/23/2004, Andy Norris wrote:
>I am adding those listings on the new server to the file 
>/usr/share/spamassassin/60_whitelist.cf.

I forgot a few:

4) do not edit files in /usr/share/spamassassin unless you REALLY know what 
you are doing. These files are considered to be a part of spamassassin, and 
will be obliterated without prompts when you upgrade. Also, if you screw up 
one of these files, it's hard to get your SA back to a working state 
without reinstalling.

Define your whitelists, etc in /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf instead. If 
you screw up, you can always remove it and be right back to an "out of the 
box" config.

(note: any duplicate settings in local.cf will clobber the existing 
settings in /usr/share when spamassassin starts up and reads the 
configuration files. So yes, you really can configure anything you need here.)

5) don't forget to run spamassassin --lint after editing any configuration 
files.