amdavidson

Configuring Spamassassin as a Daemon on Ubuntu Intrepid

posted on 2009-03-20 - amd.im/26U9

Here is the process I took to install Spamassassin as a daemon working with Postfix to process incoming mail.

I'll also be trying to reduce the memory footprint while still getting acceptable performance. Mind you, this is being implemented on a low volume server, so these settings may not be applicable to a production server with lots of users.

First, let's do some prep work on the command line:

$ sudo aptitude install spamassassin spamc
$ sudo groupadd -u 5001 spamd
$ sudo useradd -u 5001 -g spamd -s /sbin/nologin -d /var/lib/spamassassin spamd
$ sudo mkdir /var/lib/spamassassin
$ sudo chown spamd:spamd /var/lib/spamassassin

Now edit /etc/default/spamassassin and change the lines below

ENABLED=1
SAHOME="/var/lib/spamassassin"
OPTIONS="--create-prefs --max-children 2 --username spamd -H ${SAHOME}"

Edit /etc/spamassassin/local.cf

ENABLED=1
rewrite_header Subject **SPAM _SCORE_**
required_score 5.0
use_bayes 1
bayes_auto_learn 1
use_dcc 0
use_pyzor 0
use_razor2 0

Now edit /etc/postfix/master.cf and change it to look like this:

# /etc/postfix/master.cf
26   inet  n - - - - smtpd
   -o content_filter=spamassassin

# Add this segment to end of file:

# Spamassassin processing filter
spamassassin unix - n n - - pipe
   user=spamd argv=/usr/bin/spamc -e
   /usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -f ${sender} ${recipient}

Now reboot some stuff

$ sudo /etc/init.d/spamassassin restart
$ sudo postfix reload

Now test by sending email to yourself. If you view the full headers it should now have X-SPAM headers in it.

If you send an email with "XJSC4JDBQADN1.NSBN32IDNENGTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-UBE-TEST-EMAILC.34X" in the body of the email, it is guaranteed to be flagged as SPAM, and is a great way to test your spam filter.