sa-learn --forget

[ca...@nc.rr.com]

I got a message that has tagged as spam. Received a score of 5.2. This
mail is a ham mail for me/us. So i ran --forget and received this:
sa-learn --forget --mbox /var/opt/hula/netmail/users/forget
Forgot tokens from 0 message(s) (1 message(s) examined)
There was only 1 message/email in this folder. I expected to see Forgot
tokens from "1" message(s) (1 message(s) examined) but this was not the
case. What did i do wrong?
SA 3.2.1 with sles9 and spamd running without any options

Re: sa-learn --forget

[Bob McClure Jr <bo...@bobcatos.com>]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 05:35:04PM -0400, carnold5@nc.rr.com wrote:
> I got a message that has tagged as spam. Received a score of 5.2. This
> mail is a ham mail for me/us. So i ran --forget and received this:
> sa-learn --forget --mbox /var/opt/hula/netmail/users/forget
> Forgot tokens from 0 message(s) (1 message(s) examined)
> There was only 1 message/email in this folder. I expected to see Forgot
> tokens from "1" message(s) (1 message(s) examined) but this was not the
> case. What did i do wrong?
> SA 3.2.1 with sles9 and spamd running without any options

With that score, it probably was not cataloged in bayes.  What you
probably should have done is to have SA learn it as ham rather than
just forget any (spam) tokens it learned.  That is, you should

  sa-learn --ham --mbox /var/opt/hula/netmail/users/forget

as the user who got the mail.  Had it been learned as spam, that will
automatically forget its spamminess and learn it as ham.

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
bob@bobcatos.com             http://www.bobcatos.com
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but
delight to show mercy.  Micah 7:18 (NIV)

Re: sa-learn --forget

[Matt Kettler <mk...@verizon.net>]

carnold5@nc.rr.com wrote:
> I got a message that has tagged as spam. Received a score of 5.2. This
> mail is a ham mail for me/us. So i ran --forget and received this:
> sa-learn --forget --mbox /var/opt/hula/netmail/users/forget
> Forgot tokens from 0 message(s) (1 message(s) examined)
> There was only 1 message/email in this folder. I expected to see Forgot
> tokens from "1" message(s) (1 message(s) examined) but this was not the
> case. What did i do wrong?
> SA 3.2.1 with sles9 and spamd running without any options
>   
--forget only works if that specific message has been learned as spam by
the bayes subsystem. And, just because a message is tagged as spam, it
does not mean that the bayes autolearner caused it to be trained.

Really, what you would want to do is --ham, not --forget.

--ham will explicitly add information to the database that the message
is not spam.


--forget will only negate any information resulting from learning that
message, but doesn't change the database in any other way. Generally I
would avoid using forget, it's really a special-case tool only. If a
message was marked incorrectly, feed it to --spam or --ham as needed.

(and no, running mis-learned through --forget first doesn't change
anything. If a message was learned as spam, and you feed it to sa-learn
--ham, SA is smart enough to do a "forget" and "learn as ham" in one pass.)