Single-user SpamAssassin installation
This page will take you through a complete single-user SpamAssassin installation on a typical Unix account.
Many systems already have SpamAssassin and the support packages installed, in which case this whole page is unnecessary for you. However, if you want to run the newest version of SpamAssassin and all the related packages, you can always guarantee the setup by installing it yourself in your own directory. This also requires, of course, for you to update it yourself as new versions are released.
Note that, unfortunately, almost every Unix installation is slightly different, and that if you just blindly follow the commands here, this may not work, and you could even lose some mail. In other words, if you really don't know Unix, you may want to get someone who knows it better to help you with this install. Of course, if an up-to-date version of SpamAssassin with the appropriate plugins is already installed on the machine (you can check with which spamassassin), you don't need to reinstall it.
If you know Unix but not SpamAssassin and procmail, this page will hopefully provide some useful details. This is largely a distillation of the directions in the [http://www.spamassassin.org/full/3.0.x/dist/INSTALL INSTALL] file. Also note that this is fairly complex, and that if you're intimidated, you're probably better off getting someone (like the sysadmin) to install it for you. Many ISPs, for example, now offer SpamAssassin as a free option as part of Unix accounts.
Overview
We're going to install SpamAssassin 3.0.2, and add in SPF, Razor, Pyzor, and DCC. We're going to set up a mistake-based Bayesian learner (including forwarding the mail to another account), as described at ProcmailToForwardMail. This assumes that your system already has procmail installed, and has a new enough Perl and Python to work with this software, plus a number of the standard Perl modules, such as Net::DNS and DB_File. You need these two installed to use DNSBLs and Bayes, both of which are important for good performance.
Setting up your path
If your system now or in the future may have other copies of spamassassin or the other packages installed on it, we want to make sure that it uses the version we're installing. We do this by having the shell look first in our local bin directory. Even more important, we need to tell Perl where to find the packages we're installing locally, and we try to work around a language bug with some versions of Perl 5.8.
We can do this with bash by entering the following lines at the top of the .bashrc (pico .bashrc):
export PATH=$HOME/bin:$HOME/perl5/bin:$PATH export MANPATH=$HOME/man:$HOME/perl5/man:$MANPATH export PERL5LIB=$HOME/lib/perl5/:$HOME/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.3/:$PERL5LIB export LANG=en_US
The 5.8.3 should be replaced with the version you get when entering perl -v.
After saving and exiting (Choose Ctrl-X, then y, then enter), we reload the .bashrc with the command cd ~;. .bash_profile. The same commands would work if your shell is sh, ksh, or zsh, by editing the corresponding rc file.
In csh .cshrc and tcsh .tcshrc, you would add the following lines:
setenv PATH $HOME/bin:$HOME/perl5/bin:$PATH setenv MANPATH $HOME/man:$HOME/perl5/man:$MANPATH setenv PERL5LIB $HOME/lib/perl5/:$HOME/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.3/:$PERL5LIB setenv LANG en_US
Installing SpamAssassin
We're going to download SpamAssassin and the other packages into $HOME/src:
cd $HOME mkdir src cd src wget http://www.apache.org/dist/spamassassin/Mail-SpamAssassin-current.tar.gz tar xvzf Mail-SpamAssassin-current.tar.gz cd Mail-SpamAssassin-3.0.2 perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=$HOME && make && make install
Push enter 4 times (i.e., the defaults are all fine).
Testing installation
Make sure we're working with the version we just installed by entering which spamassassin and we should see something like /home/myusername/bin/spamassassin.
Enter spamassassin < sample-spam.txt. You should see a message that spamassassin is creating user preferences file and then see the output of the message with the SpamAssassin markup.
If that doesn't work, look at the debug output with spamassassin -D < sample-spam.txt and then perhaps take a look at FixingErrors.
SPF support
SpamAssassin 3.0 supports SPF to detect and penalize header forgery. This requires Mail::SPF::Query, a relatively new package that's not yet installed on most machines. You can confirm whether you have it by entering perl -e 'require Mail::SPF::Query'. If you get the error "Can't locate Mail/SPF/Query.pm in @INC..." you need it, if you get no feedback you can skip to the next section.
To install SPF, do the following:
cd $HOME/src wget http://spf.pobox.com/Mail-SPF-Query-1.997.tar.gz tar xvzf Mail-SPF-Query-1.997.tar.gz cd Mail-SPF-Query-1.997 perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=$HOME && make && make install
You can test this installation (and that PER5LIB is set correctly) with perl -e 'require Mail::SPF::Query'.
Razor support
To install the packages that Razor requires, do the following:
cd $HOME/src wget http://unc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/razor/razor-agents-sdk-2.03.tar.gz tar xvzf razor-agents-sdk-2.03.tar.gz cd razor-agents-sdk-2.03 perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=$HOME && make && make install
To install Razor:
cd $HOME/src wget http://unc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/razor/razor-agents-2.67.tar.gz tar xvzf razor-agents-2.67.tar.gz cd razor-agents-2.67 perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=$HOME && make && make install razor-client razor-admin -create razor-admin -discover razor-admin -register
It should then say "Register successful...". (Note that you may need to enter the last command a couple times to reach the registration server; if it says "Error 202", try "razor-admin -register" again.)
Pyzor support
To install Pyzor:
cd $HOME/src wget http://unc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pyzor/pyzor-0.4.0.tar.bz2 tar xvfj pyzor-0.4.0.tar.bz2 cd pyzor-0.4.0 python setup.py build python setup.py install --home=$HOME pyzor discover
If you get the following error message, define PYTHONPATH to point at $HOME/lib/python:
Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? ImportError: No module named pyzor.client
DCC support
To install DCC:
cd $HOME/src wget http://www.dcc-servers.net/dcc/source/dcc-dccproc.tar.Z tar xfvz dcc-dccproc.tar.Z cd dcc-dccproc-* ./configure --disable-sys-inst --disable-server --disable-dccm \ --disable-dccifd --homedir=$HOME/dir --bindir=$HOME/bin make && make install
Test spamassassin installation
First, create your Bayes databases by entering sa-learn --sync.
You should now have all the packages you need installed. You can test this by entering spamassassin -D < $HOME/src/Mail-SpamAssassin-3.0.0/sample-nonspam.txt and carefully reviewing the output. Specifically, look for the following lines:
debug: bayes: found bayes db version 3 debug: is DNS available? 1 debug: registering glue method for check_for_spf_helo_pass (Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::SPF=HASH(0x8d21990)) debug: Razor2 is available debug: Pyzor is available: /home/username/bin/pyzor debug: DCC is available: /home/username/bin/dccproc
These lines confirm, in order, that DB_File, Net::DNS, Mail::SPF::Query, Razor, Pyzor, and DCC are all correctly installed and configured.
Configure procmail
Copy the sample .procmailrc from ProcmailToForwardMail. The easiest way to do this is:
cd $HOME wget http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin-data/attachments/ProcmailToForwardMail/attachments/procmailrc.forward.txt mv procmailrc.forward.txt .procmailrc
It's essential that you edit that file with your correct public and private addresses. Do this with pico .procmailrc.
If you don't want your mail forwarded to another account, you can instead use the example procmail file by entering cp $HOME/src/Mail-SpamAssassin-3.0.0/procmailrc.example $HOME/.procmailrc.
Configure .forward
Follow the steps in the first section of UsedViaProcmail to enable procmail.
Specifically, if your system supports .forward files (as opposed to .qmail) and is not already processing mail through procmail, then edit your .forward. Replace user with your username (which you can discover by entering whoami) and entering the correct procmail path (which you can discover with which procmail):
cd $HOME pico .forward "|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #user"
Choose Ctrl-X, then y, then enter to save.
Test mail installation
Now, you should be ready to send some test emails and ensure everything works as expected. First, send yourself a test email that doesn't contain anything suspicious. You should receive it normally, but there will be a header containing "X-Spam-Status: No".
Now, send yourself a copy of the GTUBE test string to check to be sure it is marked as spam. That string is:
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-UBE-TEST-EMAIL*C.34X
This email will be recognized as spam and put in the almost-certainly-spam folder. You should be able to see it by entering less $HOME/mail/almost-certainly-spam.
If your test non-spam email doesn't get through to you, immediately rename your .forward file until you figure out cause of the the problem, so you don't lose incoming email. mv .procmailrc .procmailrc.broken.
Note: one possible cause for problems is the use of smrsh on the MTA system; see ProcmailVsSmrsh for details.
Follow-up
You'll want to subscribe to the spamassassin-announce [http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-announce list] to be alerted when new updates come out. Follow the same steps as your original install (with the new filename, of course), and the make install will automatically overwrite old versions.
If you want to install custom rules, such as those at CustomRulesets, just cd $HOME/etc/mail/spamassassin and wget the ones you want. Note that many of these rules have already been incorporated into SpamAssassin 3.0 and so you'll have an unduly high risk of FalsePositives if you use both.
If you're using SpamAssassin for non-commercial use, you may also want to turn on the MAPS rules, which are useful DNSBLs. Edit the user_prefs by entering pico $HOME/.spamassassin/user_prefs and add the following 4 lines:
score RCVD_IN_MAPS_RBL 2.0 score RCVD_IN_MAPS_DUL 1.0 score RCVD_IN_MAPS_RSS 2.0 score RCVD_IN_MAPS_NML 2.0