Spam Assassin

[Mikie]

Hi,

Can anyone help a newbie to get spam assassin set up to work with KDE's Kmail? I know there are many other email clients that are already installed, (actually, I've heard others say good things about Evolution, and I have taken a look at it) but Kmail has a utility that will import my Outlook Express folders and mail, and I'm one of those people that like to keep (some) messages inside their email client's mailboxes - my mailboxes take up about 85Mb of space.

I have already downloaded spam assassin, and installed (via rpm, on Redhat 7.3) it. After going over some of the documentation, I am a little confused, and could use a little hand-holding.

Kmail works fine, I can get my email from my ISP, no problem. Now all I want is a good spam blocker, and spam assassin sure sounds like a fantastic tool. The Kmail documentation has a little on how to use spam assassin, but stupid me just doesn't get it. I tried to follow the instructions they gave, but it doesn't "take", ie, I tried to set up a filter which would pipe everything to spam assassin, but after I thought I had done what I was supposed to, and clicked ok, the filter I set up wasn't saved.

If anybody has any experience with this, I could use a little help.


Thanks,
Mike
???

i use spamassassin with kmail and it works great

first of all, get the latest stable version of spamassassin (2.31). when it's installed, open kmail and go to the filters section.

then add a new filter and set it up like this:
<any header> matches regular expression .

in the textbox where u type the regular expression make sure u type a space before the dot.

then for Filter action choose "pipe through" and in the textbox put: spamassassin -P -F 0

then uncheck the option "If this filter matches, stop processing here"


then set up another filter and put it below the <any header> filter. set it up like this:
<message> contains SPAM: -------------------- Start SpamAssassin results ----------------------

and for filter actions choose "move to folder" and then select "trash". i also set up another action that marks the spam mail as read. this way the spam goes directly to my trash bin and i don't even see it.

after putting the filters in, click the apply button and then the OK button.

hope this helps

[Mikie]

Ralinx,


Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are THE man.

Works like a charm now.

I learned two things from your reply - the first was that I hadn't put a " . " where I should have. I guess the next thing I have to do is learn more about regular expressions. The second you didn't mention explicitly, but was that clicking "OK" is not the same as clicking "Apply" (which was why my initial attempts were unsuccessful) - I feel like such a dumb-ass.

Now I'm going to go back to the documentation, and learn what those flags are for, and maybe do a little tinkering. Also going to download Vipul Razor, and see if that helps the accuracy rate of Spam Assassin - first time out, it caught twelve out of 17 spam messages, but at least no false positives.

Thanks again. Your help is much appreciated.



Mike

wow spamassassin has actually let some spam get through?

i've been using it for about 3 weeks now and it hasn't let one real spam mail get through so far. it has flagged some legit mails though, but that percentage is extremely low.

[Mikie]

Hey, I downloaded and installed Vipul's Razor, already. From source, too, that's a first for me. (So far, I've only been getting my feet wet with just rpm's)

It's working, or at least i think so, because now the mail takes even longer to download - I figure it's because it's checking mails against the razor database. I'm not complaining about the speed though, it's got to do what it's got to do so that I don't see the spam.

It isn't perfect, though. Some spam messages still come through - but not very many now. And, I've had to undo just one message that Spam Assassin tagged as spam. I guess it works better for you possibly because you don't get that much spam - lucky you.



Thanks for all your help,
Mike