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NAME

spamassassin - mail filter to identify spam using text analysis  

SYNOPSIS

spamassassin [options] [ < mailmessage | path ... ]

spamassassin -d [ < mailmessage | path ... ]

spamassassin -r [-w addr] [ < mailmessage | path ... ]

spamassassin -k [-w addr] [ < mailmessage | path ... ]

spamassassin -W|-R [ < mailmessage | path ... ]

Options:

 -L, --local                       Local tests only (no online tests)
 -r, --report                      Report message as spam
 -k, --revoke                      Revoke message as spam
 -d, --remove-markup               Remove spam reports from a message
 -C path, --configpath=path, --config-file=path
                                   Path to standard configuration dir
 -p prefs, --prefspath=file, --prefs-file=file
                                   Set user preferences file
 --siteconfigpath=path             Path for site configs
                                   (def: /etc/mail/spamassassin)
 -x, --nocreate-prefs              Don't create user preferences file
 -e, --exit-code                   Exit with a non-zero exit code if the
                                   tested message was spam
 --mbox                            read in messages in mbox format
 --mbx                             read in messages in UW mbx format
 -t, --test-mode                   Pipe message through and add extra
                                   report to the bottom
 --lint                            Lint the rule set: report syntax errors
 -W, --add-to-whitelist            Add addresses in mail to whitelist (AWL)
 --add-to-blacklist                Add addresses in mail to blacklist (AWL)
 -R, --remove-from-whitelist       Remove all addresses found in mail
                                   from whitelist (AWL)
 --add-addr-to-whitelist=addr      Add addr to whitelist (AWL)
 --add-addr-to-blacklist=addr      Add addr to blacklist (AWL)
 --remove-addr-from-whitelist=addr Remove addr from whitelist (AWL)
 -D, --debug [area=n,...]          Print debugging messages
 -V, --version                     Print version
 -h, --help                        Print usage message

 

DESCRIPTION

SpamAssassin is a mail filter to identify spam using text analysis and several internet-based realtime blacklists.

Using its rule base, it uses a wide range of heuristic tests on mail headers and body text to identify ``spam'', also known as unsolicited commercial email.

Once identified, the mail is then tagged as spam for later filtering using the user's own mail user-agent application.

SpamAssassin also includes support for reporting spam messages to collaborative filtering databases, such as Vipul's Razor ( http://razor.sourceforge.net/ ).

The default tagging operations that take place are detailed in ``TAGGING''.

By default, message(s) are read in from STDIN (< mailmessage), or from specified files and directories (path ...) STDIN and files are assumed to be in file format, with a single message per file. Directories are assumed to be in a format where each file in the directory contains only one message (directories are not recursed and filenames containing whitespace or beginning with ``.'' or ``,'' are skipped). The options --mbox and --mbx can override the assumed format, see the appropriate OPTION information below.  

OPTIONS

-e, --error-code, --exit-code

Exit with a non-zero error code, if the message is determined to be spam.

-h, --help

Print help message and exit.

-t, --test-mode

Test mode. Pipe message through and add extra report. Note that the report text assumes that the message is spam, since in normal use it is only visible in this case. Pay attention to the score instead.

If you run this with -d, the message will first have SpamAssassin markup removed before being tested.

If you run tests with the auto-whitelist enabled, the score result will be added to the AWL. This may not be what you want to do. If it is not, then disable the auto-whitelist.

-r, --report

Report this message as manually-verified spam. This will submit the mail message read from STDIN to various spam-blocker databases. Currently, these are the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse "http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/", Pyzor "http://pyzor.sourceforge.net/", Vipul's Razor "http://razor.sourceforge.net/", and SpamCop "http://www.spamcop.net/".

If the message contains SpamAssassin markup, the markup will be stripped out automatically before submission. The support modules for DCC, Pyzor, and Razor must be installed for spam to be reported to each service. SpamCop reports will have greater effect if you register and set the "spamcop_submission_address" option.

The message will also be submitted to SpamAssassin's learning systems; currently this is the internal Bayesian statistical-filtering system (the BAYES rules). (Note that if you only want to perform statistical learning, and do not want to report mail to third-parties, you should use the "sa-learn" command directly instead.)

-k, --revoke

Revoke this message. This will revoke the mail message read from STDIN from various spam-blocker databases. Currently, these are Vipul's Razor.

Revocation support for the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse, Pyzor, and SpamCop is not currently available.

If the message contains SpamAssassin markup, the markup will be stripped out automatically before submission. The support modules for Razor must be installed for spam to be revoked from the service.

The message will also be submitted as 'ham' (non-spam) to SpamAssassin's learning systems; currently this is the internal Bayesian statistical-filtering system (the BAYES rules). (Note that if you only want to perform statistical learning, and do not want to report mail to third-parties, you should use the "sa-learn" command directly instead.)

--lint

Syntax check (lint) the rule set and configuration files, reporting typos and rules that do not compile correctly. Exits immediately with 0 if there are no errors, or greater than 0 if any errors are found.

-W, --add-to-whitelist

Add all email addresses, in the headers and body of the mail message read from STDIN, to the automatic whitelist. Note that you must be running "spamassassin" or "spamd" with the auto-whitelist enabled for this to work.

--add-to-blacklist

Add all email addresses, in the headers and body of the mail message read from STDIN, to the automatic whitelist with a high score (ensuring they will be ''blacklisted''). Note that you must be running "spamassassin" or "spamd" with the auto-whitelist enabled.

-R, --remove-from-whitelist

Remove all email addresses, in the headers and body of the mail message read from STDIN, from the automatic whitelist. STDIN must contain a full email message, so to remove a single address you should use --remove-addr-from-whitelist instead.

Note that you must be running "spamassassin" or "spamd" with the auto-whitelist enabled.

--add-addr-to-whitelist

Add the named email address to the automatic whitelist. Note that you must be running "spamassassin" or "spamd" with the auto-whitelist enabled.

--add-addr-to-blacklist

Add the named email address to the automatic whitelist with a high score (ensuring they will be ''blacklisted''). Note that you must be running "spamassassin" or "spamd" with the auto-whitelist enabled.

--remove-addr-from-whitelist

Remove the named email address from the automatic whitelist. Note that you must be running "spamassassin" or "spamd" with the auto-whitelist enabled.

-L, --local

Do only the ''local'' tests, ones that do not require an internet connection to operate. Normally, SpamAssassin will try to detect whether you are connected to the net before doing these tests anyway, but for faster checks you may wish to use this.

Note that SpamAssassin's network rules are run in parallel. This can cause overhead in terms of the number of file descriptors required if --local is not used; it is recommended that the minimum limit on fds be raised to at least 256 for safety.

-d, --remove-markup

Remove SpamAssassin markup (the ``SpamAssassin results'' report, X-Spam-Status headers, etc.) from the mail message. The resulting message, which will be more or less identical to the original, pre-SpamAssassin input, will be output to STDOUT.

(Note: the message will not be exactly identical; some headers will be reformatted due to some features of the Mail::Internet package, but the body text will be.)

-C path, --configpath=path, --config-file=path

Use the specified path for locating the distributed configuration files. Ignore the default directories (usually "/usr/share/spamassassin" or similar).

--siteconfigpath=path

Use the specified path for locating site-specific configuration files. Ignore the default directories (usually "/etc/mail/spamassassin" or similar).

-p prefs, --prefspath=prefs, --prefs-file=prefs

Read user score preferences from prefs (usually "$HOME/.spamassassin/user_prefs").

-D [area=n,...], --debug [area=n,...]

Produce diagnostic output. The level of diagnostic output can be set for each area separately; area is the area of the code to instrument, and n is a positive or negative number indicating the debug level or bitmask for that area of code. For example, to produce diagnostic output on all rules that hit, use:

        spamassassin -D rulesrun=255

-x, --nocreate-prefs

Disable creation of user preferences file.

--mbox

Specify that the input message(s) are in mbox format. mbox is a standard Unix message folder format.

--mbx

Specify that the input message(s) are in UW .mbx format. mbx is the mailbox format used within the University of Washington's IMAP implementation; see "http://www.washington.edu/imap/".

 

CONFIGURATION FILES

The rule base, text templates, and rule description text are loaded from the configuration files.

By default, configuration data is loaded from the first existing directory in: /usr/share/spamassassin; /usr/share/spamassassin; /usr/local/share/spamassassin; /usr/share/spamassassin .

Site-specific configuration data is used to override any values which had already been set. This is loaded from the first existing directory in: /etc/mail/spamassassin; /usr/etc/mail/spamassassin; /usr/etc/spamassassin; /usr/local/etc/spamassassin; /usr/pkg/etc/spamassassin; /usr/etc/spamassassin; /etc/mail/spamassassin; /etc/spamassassin .

Spamassassin will read *.cf in these directories, in alphanumeric order within each directory (similar to SysV-style startup scripts). In other words, it will read 10_misc.cf before 50_scores.cf and 20_body_tests.cf before 20_head_test.cf. Options in later files will override earlier files.

The user preferences (such as scores to attach to each rule), are loaded from the file specified in the -p argument. If this is not specified, ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs is used if it exists. "spamassassin" will create this file if it does not exist, using user_prefs.template as a template. This file will be looked for in: /etc/mail/spamassassin; /usr/etc/mail/spamassassin; /usr/share/spamassassin; /etc/spamassassin; /etc/mail/spamassassin; /usr/local/share/spamassassin; /usr/share/spamassassin.  

TAGGING

The following two sections detail the tagging that takes place for messages.

Note that if you use the -t argument, all mails will be tagged as if they are spam messages.  

TAGGING FOR SPAM MAILS

If an incoming message is tagged as spam, instead of modifying the original message, SpamAssassin will create a new report message and attach the original message as a message/rfc822 MIME part (ensuring the original message is completely preserved and easier to recover).

The new report message inherits the following headers (if they are present) from the original spam message:

Subject: header

From: header

To: header

The above headers can be modified if the relavent "rewrite_header" option is given.

Cc: header

Date: header

And (by default) these headers are added:

X-Spam-Status: header

A string, "Yes, score=nn required=nn tests=xxx,xxx autolearn=(ham|spam|no|unavailable|failed)" is set in this header to reflect the filter status.

X-Spam-Flag: header

Set to "YES".

X-Spam-Report: header

Please note that the headers that added are now fully configurable via the add_header option. Please see the manpage for Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf(3) for more information.

spam mail body text

The SpamAssassin report is added to top of the mail message body, if the message is marked as spam.

 

DEFAULT TAGGING FOR HAM (NON-SPAM) MAILS

X-Spam-Status: header

A string, "No, score=nn required=nn tests=xxx,xxx autolearn=(ham|spam|no|unavailable|failed)" is set in this header to reflect the filter status.

Added headers are fully configurable via the add_header configuration option. Please see the manpage for Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf(3) for more information.  

INSTALLATION

The spamassassin command is part of the Mail::SpamAssassin Perl module. Install this as a normal Perl module, using "perl -MCPAN -e shell", or by hand.

For further details on how to install, please read the "INSTALL" file from the SpamAssassin distribution.  

SEE ALSO

sa-learn(1) spamd(1) spamc(1) Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf(3) Mail::SpamAssassin(3)  

PREREQUISITES

"Mail::SpamAssassin"  

BUGS

See <http://bugzilla.spamassassin.org/>  

AUTHORS

The SpamAssassin(tm) Project <http://spamassassin.apache.org/>  

COPYRIGHT

SpamAssassin is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, as described in the file "LICENSE" included with the distribution.

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Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

CONFIGURATION FILES

TAGGING

TAGGING FOR SPAM MAILS

DEFAULT TAGGING FOR HAM (NON-SPAM) MAILS

INSTALLATION

SEE ALSO

PREREQUISITES

BUGS

AUTHORS

COPYRIGHT