SpamAssassin on mail.pa.msu.edu

1. E-mail address whitelisting
   

   The SpamAssassin configuration allows the user to specify E-mail addresses from which E-mail is considered highly unlikely to be "spam". Of course, some spammers and many E-mail viruses use real E-mail addresses as "From:" addresses, which confuses matters.
   

   The procedure for putting an E-mail address on your personal "whitelist" is as follows.
   

   • Log into mail.pa.msu.edu using ssh (preferred) or telnet (discouraged for security reasons).
      
     1. Type the command
        addwhitelist E-mail-address
        at the command prompt.
         
        For example,
        addwhitelist noreply@msu.edu
         
     2. Log out with the command exit.

   Any E-mail from the address used as addwhitelist's argument will have 100 points subtracted from its SpamAssassin score.

   The addwhitelist command can take a wild-card argument, using "*" as the wild-card, but any such argument must be enclosed in double-quotes. Here is an example:
    
   addwhitelist "*@pa.msu.edu"
    
   (note that this particular whitelist item is on by default in the standard SpamAssassin user definitions file).

2. E-mail address blacklisting
   

   The SpamAssassin configuration allows the user to specify E-mail addresses from which E-mail is considered highly likely to be "spam".
   

   The procedure for putting an E-mail address on your personal "blacklist" is as follows.
   

   • Log into mail.pa.msu.edu using ssh (preferred) or telnet (discouraged for security reasons).
     1. Type the command
        addblacklist E-mail-address
        at the command prompt.
         
        For example,
        addblacklist noreply@msu.edu
         
     2. Log out with the command exit.

   Any E-mail from the address used as addblacklist's argument will have 100 points added to its SpamAssassin score.

   The addblacklist command can take a wild-card argument, using "*" as the wild-card, but any such argument must be enclosed in double-quotes. Here is an example:
    
   addblacklist "*@spammers-r-us.com"
    

3. User Configuration files
   

   The SpamAssassin setup involves creation of the E-mail folders described in FAQ #1 as well as three files used to configure its use.

   These three files are listed here, with links to example files.

   • .forward
     This file is in the user's login area. Instead of listing an E-mail address to which all E-mail messages should be forwarded (its usual function), it contains an instruction to the system to route all E-mail through the procmail program which manages the E-mail filters.
   • .procmailrc
     This file is in the user's login area. It sets up pointers to the user's mail area, the file which procmail uses as a log file, and goes on to specify the set of filters that each E-mail message goes through. At the end of the current default .procmailrc file are some lines, commented out (with "#" characters at the start of the lines), which provide for forwarding non-spam messages to another E-mail address, if desired, and for running the vacation auto-response program for non-spam messages, if desired (in the latter case, in addition to un-commenting the pertinent lines in .procmailrc, there are some other files to set up - contact helpdesk@pa.msu.edu for assistance if you are interested).
   • user_prefs
     This file is in the user's .spamassassin subdirectory. It sets up basic SpamAssassin-specific settings, such as the threshold score above which E-mail messages are flagged as spam and get put into the IN.probable-spam folder.
     It also has some settings which might be of interest to users concerning how non-English-language and non-western-character-set E-mail messages are scored.
     These settings are commented within the file (some are active and can optionally be commented out, while others are commented out and can optionally be un-commented in order to activate them).
     User-specified whitelist_from and blacklist_from addresses are set in this file, too (as described earlier in this FAQ, above).
   
   

   If you are not familiar with file editing procedure on a Solaris Unix system such as mail.pa.msu.edu, contact helpdesk@pa.msu.edu for assistance.

   
   
4. Global Configuration files
   

   Settings in the user configuration files described above override the local default settings, which in turn override the program built-in settings.

   In case you are interested, the scores for each of the tests SpamAssassin uses to build up an E-mail message's total score may be found in the following links.
   

   • Links
     • SpamAssassin - 1 (How to get it and what you'll see)
     • SpamAssassin - 2 (How it works)
     • SpamAssassin - 3 (SpamAssassin's "learning" feature)
     • The official SpamAssassin website
     • Configuring IMAP e-mail clients for use with Mail.pa.msu.edu

Questions not covered in this FAQ? Make sure to send them in!

Last Updated: Tuesday, 21 March 2005 by G J Perkins