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Re: problem with spamassassin and following rules

2005-08-01 10:51:52
At 01:41 2005-08-02 +1000, Peter Jones wrote:

I also use spamc rather than spamassassin because it was recommended at
the time; whether this should make a difference I don't know, but I seem
to recall you yourself said somewhere that if you switched to spamc it
all worked; why not just do that?

He doesn't have buggy software - the problem is US and our software.

Finally, I got the impression that a lock file was required; I'm seeing
others here saying it isn't?  Which is correct?

Well, procmail itself isn't at risk of overwriting a file when you pipe to 
a process (unless you have a series and eventually redirect to a file*), 
but if that process writes to files and doesn't perform locking 
(translation: it's poorly written, AKA buggy), then having procmail wrap 
the operation in a lockfile will help protect against that (so long as it's 
a per-user file that the buggy process is trying to manipulate -- if it 
tries writing to a file that OTHER users might also be able to write to, 
unless they are also using the SAME lockfile as yourself (which is terribly 
unlikely), then YOUR lockfile is meaningless to them).  Additionally, a 
lockfile will throttle the system load generated by SA - granted, it'll 
hold up ALL of your mail (at least that which should be piped through SA), 
until the prior SA process completes.


I work for an ISP, and we have about a dozen servers running spamd (the 
daemon interface for SpamAssassin, allowing other mail servers to submit 
messages across the network to check them for spammishness), and the 
loading on them is astounding.

IMO, SA is a poorly written program, lacking in optimizations, and which 
assumes that there is unlimited resources available.  It doesn't throttle well.


* like so:

| someprocess > yourfile

In which case, you should definatley have a lockfile for 
yourfile.  Procmail should manage this fine with an implicit (unnamed) 
lockfile flag.

---
  Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering

  Procmail disclaimer: <http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
  Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies.  I'll get my copy from the list.


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