SpamAssassin confusion and upgrading

[Louis Li <96...@alumni.cityu.edu.hk>]

Hello, I'm novice in Linux and I wish to add SpamAssassin to my current
Fedora 3 server, I'm currently using my ISP mail accounts and I have
tested with SAproxy in Windows and it works fine.

However when I installed the bundled SpamAssassin (3.0.4), I couldn't
find any settings to key in my ISP email server address it should
connect to (just like in SAproxy)

Now here comes the questions:
1. Does SpamAssassin work just like SAproxy in Fedora 3? Does it work as
standalone mail proxy or have to work with mail servers+procmail together?

2. I tried to upgrade my SA to 3.1.x, I have read the "upgrade notes"
but it doesn't contain instructions for how to upgrade... I googled and
found someone using "apt-get" command but seems I need a special package
to do that... What do I need?

3. I tried to build the rpm file from the tarball although Linux said I
do not have the "rpmbuild" command file... Where could I find them?

I have read through the FAQ but couldn't find any answers to my questions...
Thanks for helping.

Re: SpamAssassin confusion and upgrading

[Chris Purves <ch...@northfolk.ca>]

Louis Li wrote:
> Hello, I'm novice in Linux and I wish to add SpamAssassin to my current
> Fedora 3 server, I'm currently using my ISP mail accounts and I have
> tested with SAproxy in Windows and it works fine.
> 
> However when I installed the bundled SpamAssassin (3.0.4), I couldn't
> find any settings to key in my ISP email server address it should
> connect to (just like in SAproxy)
> 
> Now here comes the questions:
> 1. Does SpamAssassin work just like SAproxy in Fedora 3? Does it work as
> standalone mail proxy or have to work with mail servers+procmail together?

SpamAssassin scans mail for spam.  You need to give messages to
spamassassin and then decide what you want to do with them when
spamassassin is finished.  If you want to something like SAproxy, then
you will need to install an e-mail proxy that can call spamassassin.
The spamassassin wiki has some information:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/MailProxy

Some e-mail clients can also be configured to run messages through
spamassassin:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/IntegratedInMua

I don't use spamassassin in either of the above methods, so I don't
think I can be of much help to you, but there are lots of ways to do it.


-- 
Chris