Re: I want to optimize for mailinglists.

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Sep 05), Steven W. Orr said:
> Here's my setup. I just installed spamass-milt-0.2.0+cvs and it seems
> to be ok. I have three questions.
> 
> The first one is easy.
> 
> 1. I have some RBLs that I was already using in my sendmail.mc file.
> Is it very clear that I should disable the RBLs that I was using
> before if those RBLs are also being used by spamassassin?

It depends.  I still use relays.ordb.org as a sendmail DNSBL because
I've never seen a false positive from them, an if the admin at the
other end is even slightly competent, they'll fix their system asap
when they get the bounce message.
 
> 2. mailinglists. This one is harder. I run a majordomo list manager. 
> Before I switched to using the milter, none of the mail that came in
> addressed to a list address went through SA. That's because there is
> no user associated a list address, thus nobody to deliver to, thus no
> procmail processing. Now that I'm in a milter environment I just
> don't know where I stand. Is there a way to tell the system that I
> want all mail that is addressed to a list address that it should use
> my account as the default user? What processing is used in the first
> place. I'm confused.

One possible way to add spamassassin to majordomo without using a
milter would be to edit your redirection alias to read "|spamc |
/home/majordomo/wrapper etc etc", and add X-Spam-Flag: to your taboo
headers list.  With a milter, you don't have to edit the alias since
all mail gets filtered.

> 3. This is related to the first two. I just don't get what the -u
> option is for the milter. Is the argument to -u supposed to be the
> literal string 'user' or is there some method for selecting what tha
> argument should be?  The goal is to get Bayes working for the list
> addresses. (I'm hoping this will eat of the Sobig crap.)

The -u flag enables recipient scanning on incoming emails.  If one and
only one recipient is found, that address is passed to spamc.  If
multiple recipients are found, then whatever argument to -u you gave
will be sent as the username to spamc.  So if you used "-u bob", then
for any incoming email with more than one local recipient,
spamass-milter will call "spamc -u bob".

I'm not sure what username gets passed for | aliases.  The current CVS
version will probably pass the expanded alias (i.e. the "| wrapper"
bit) to spamc, which means that spamd will end up using its default
settings because that's not a valid local user.  I'm not positive
because the spamd manpage doesn't really say, but I think if the
username is not found, spamd will use the prefs from the "nobody" user.

If you have any better way to word the description of -u in the
manpage, I'd love to see it :)

-- 
        Dan Nelson
        address@hidden