[NTLUG:Discuss] SpamAssassin

[Jack Snodgrass]

On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 22:28:19 -0500, Rick Cook wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I have been "playing" with SpamAssassin at home with thoughts about setting 
> it up to run on ntlug.org. This would be of benefit to the mailing list 
> administrators and the few people who have ntlug.org email addresses. I 
> think all of the mailing lists are set to require subscription prior to 
> accepting a post (which adds to the mailing list administrator burden).
> 
> Unfortunately, SpamAssassin seems to place an inordinate burden on my 
> PowerMacintosh Dual 1Ghz G4 on its 1.5M/128K ADSL line (several seconds to 
> process each message with "lots" of network traffic during the checking). 
> Does anyone have any suggestions for improving SpamAssassin's performance?
> 
> Also, though it does not matter on ntlug.org, mail "gathered" by fetchmail 
> and fed my the SMTP server is treated as "local" and not scanned. If I fix 
> that, then mail that originates in my SOHO network also gets scanned as it 
> leaves. Not a desirable situation either way. Any suggestions on how to get 
> fetchmail to act like an external MTA?


My maillog shows:
Jul  3 04:52:06 ns1 spamd[10273]: identified spam (22.4/12.0) for jack:99 in 2.9 seconds, 3984 bytes. 
Jul  3 05:14:22 ns1 spamd[10378]: clean message (-100.0/12.0) for jack:99 in 1.4 seconds, 1099 bytes. 
Jul  3 05:52:06 ns1 spamd[10501]: clean message (4.2/12.0) for jack:99 in 2.0 seconds, 907 bytes. 
Jul  3 06:12:05 ns1 spamd[10588]: identified spam (17.9/12.0) for jack:99 in 1.2 seconds, 1889 bytes. 
Jul  3 06:32:05 ns1 spamd[10665]: identified spam (16.2/12.0) for jack:99 in 1.5 seconds, 10610 bytes. 
Jul  3 07:12:05 ns1 spamd[10806]: clean message (7.1/12.0) for jack:99 in 1.5 seconds, 5995 bytes. 
Jul  3 07:12:06 ns1 spamd[10808]: identified spam (23.1/12.0) for jack:99 in 2.9 seconds, 6659 bytes. 
Jul  3 07:32:05 ns1 spamd[10883]: identified spam (19.7/12.0) for jack:99 in 1.2 seconds, 2201 bytes. 
Jul  3 07:32:05 ns1 spamd[10885]: identified spam (15.1/12.0) for jack:99 in 1.3 seconds, 5505 bytes. 
Jul  3 08:12:06 ns1 spamd[11047]: identified spam (21.2/12.0) for jack:99 in 2.5 seconds, 4919 bytes. 
Jul  3 08:52:05 ns1 spamd[11202]: identified spam (25.9/12.0) for jack:99 in 1.4 seconds, 9488 bytes. 
Jul  3 08:52:06 ns1 spamd[11200]: identified spam (27.2/12.0) for jack:99 in 1.9 seconds, 1478 bytes. 
Jul  3 09:32:09 ns1 spamd[11364]: clean message (11.6/12.0) for jack:99 in 5.4 seconds, 5946 bytes. 
Jul  3 09:52:05 ns1 spamd[11440]: clean message (11.6/12.0) for jack:99 in
1.3 seconds, 6628 bytes.

for my spamassassin stuff. As far as I can tell... my box ( Dual P3 700)
doesn't have any problems getting mail. What do your 'seconds' numbers
show  in your log? Maybe I should worry.... 

I have postfix interface with SPAM Assassin. It uses an LMTP interace 
that talks with my Cyrus Mail server. As far as I know it's fairly 
quick. The server is remote, so I only access it remotely for web and
mail. 

Since I use the LMTP stuff, 'users' don't run procmail or any procesess.

spamd runs all of the time and the lmtp processes talk to it and then 
pass the data onto cyrus. 

jack