FAQ

Q: I have installed SpamAssassin for Windows but I'm still receiving spam mails in my mail client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook)! Why is that?

A: SpamAssassin doesn't automatically integrate into existing mail application but acts as service which mail can be passed to to scan them for spam signs. The interaction between your mail client / mail transfer agent and SpamAssassin must be provided by some other mechanism.

Q: How can I run SpamD as a Windows service?

A: You will need an external application to create a wrapper for spamd.exe that can be used as a Windows service. With "SpamAssassin in a Box" we provide an advanced Windows service, that is aligned to particular SpamAssassin requirements (automatic rule updates, periodical restarts and many more). If you need enhanced functionality like that of a mail router or POP3 connector, please have a look at our products "SmartPOP2Exchange" and "Exchange Server Toolbox", which contain the specialized SpamAssassin service as well..

Q: How can I start SpamAssassin without the console window?

A: This can be accomplished by using a wrapper application. Please consider that this is not covered by our freeware support, as we have developed our product "SpamAssassin in a Box" for such requirements, that lets you start the SpamAssassin daemon conveniently via the Windows service control center.

Q: Is it possible to use ClamAV with SpamAssassin for Windows?

A: ClamAV and the SpamAssassin ClamAV plugin are not included in SpamAssassin for Windows and the official Apache SpamAssassin. If you want to make use of ClamAV in SpamAssassin for Windows, you need to have an operational ClamAV and the SpamAssassin ClamAV plugin, which you can find on the Apache SpamAssassin website. How to use third party plugins in SpamAssassin for Windows is explained here. Please consider that our products "SmartPOP2Exchange" and "Exchange Server Toolbox". contain a fully functional ClamAV to scan emails for possible viruses.

Q: How can I manually train the SpamAssassin Bayes filter?

A: The SpamAssassin Bayes filter can be trained either using the sa-learn.exe or the spamc.exe. The main difference on a Windows system is that sa-learn will run under the currents user credentials while spamc will pass the mails that shall be trained to spamd (the SpamAssassin Daemon) which then trains the mail under the user credentials of spamd. This is especially important if you run SpamD for spam filtering under a separate user account, e.g. the Windows system user account (which is the default when using SpamAssassin in a Box for example). In this case you have to use spamc for training, as using sa-learn would just train the Bayes database for the local user.

For manual training we provide a batch script which can be used to train messages in a specific folder either as spam or ham. Besides the directory where the messages that shall be learned reside, the script requires you to decide whether the messages shall be learned as spam or ham. Please note that messages must be conform to the RFC822 format in order to make the Bayes filter work properly. For converting an Outlook message into a RFC822 conform message there are several tools available. The script tries learning using spamc first - if that fails because there is no local spamd instance available, it will "fallback" to sa-learn (assuming that learning shall be done using the local user account). To use the batch script, please follow these steps:

1. Open a command line prompt (run > cmd.exe).
2. Change directory (cd) to the installation directory of SpamAssassin for Windows.
3. Execute command: trainbayes.bat
4. Follow the instructions of the batch script.

Q: How can I adjust the threshold/score at which mails are being tagged as spam?

A: The threshold can be configured in the "local.cf" configuration file which resides in the configuration directory (%INSTALLDIR%\etc\spamassassin\) of SpamAssassin for Windows. Please open the text file with an appropriate text editor and search for the following line:
# required_score 5.0
Remove the comment sign (#) in front of the line and adjust the score to the desired value. Please note that any changes in the configuration files in the configuration directory will require a restart of the SpamAssassin daemon in order to take effect.

Q: How can I add custom rules?

A: To add your own SpamAssassin rules, please create a plain text file that has the file extension .cf and place it into the configuration directory (%INSTALLDIR%\etc\spamassassin\) of SpamAssassin for Windows. You can now add your own rules using the following syntax:
header JAM_ERECTION Subject =~ /e.?r.?e.?c.?t.?[i1|l!].?[o0].?n/i
describe JAM_ERECTION Subject contains "erection"
score JAM_ERECTION 1.0

This will create a rule which catches various spellings of the word "erection" in the subject of a mail. For more information on writing custom rules, please refer to the following topic in the official SpamAssassin Wiki: http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/WritingRules

Alternatively you can also define your rules in the "user_prefs" configuration file which is located in the user profile directory. For a regular user this is the following directory:
%userprofile%\.spamassassin
When executing SpamAssassin using the Windows system service account (which is the default when using SpamAssassin in a Box for example) the file will typically be located at the following directory (assuming a 64 bit system):
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\.spamassassin

When using the SpamAssassin daemon (spamd.exe) for spam filtering, testing rules in the "user_prefs" file has the advantage that its contents are read for each mail and not only at the start of the process. This way you won't have to stop and start the SpamAssassin daemon each time you want to check if a certain change to your custom rule has the desired effect. If the rule is working as intended you can still copy it to a .cf file in the configuration directory (%INSTALLDIR%\etc\spamassassin\). This is a good practice as a huge "user_prefs" file would decrease performance of the SpamAssassin daemon.

Q: Why is there no information about configuration?

A: You'll find a lot of information on the official docs or SpamAssassin Wiki. As these pages are updated continuously you may prefer information provided there.

Q: spamassassin.exe / spamd.exe fails with the following message:
config: no rules were found! Do you need to run 'sa-update'?

A: Most likely SpamAssassin is not able to find a valid rule set. Please run sa-update.bat to download the latest rules.

Q: sa-update fails with the following message, what can I do?
config: no configuration text or files found! do you need to run 'sa-update'?
check: no loaded plugin implements 'check_main': cannot scan!
Check the necessary '.pre' files are in the config directory.

A: The path to rules and/or config dir is invalid. Make sure you run the executable (spamd.exe, spamassassin.exe, ...) from their main directory instead of specifying an absolute path to run.

Q: When starting SpamAssassin I get the following notification. What is this for?

info: rules: meta test __SOME_TEST_NAME has dependency 'YET_ANOTHER_TEST' with a zero score

This happens if SpamAssassin finds rules with a score of zero. Tests with such a score a generally used in third party rule sets.
They check for a specific spam or ham sign but do not actually assign a score to leave it to the SpamAssassin admin if they want to use it or not to optimize their spam detection.
The message can be avoided by assigning a score to the related test or by removing the channel which belongs the particular rule from the sa-update call.
To assign a score, open 'local.cf' in the configuration directory (%INSTALLDIR%\etc\spamassassin\) and add the line following line:
score YET_ANOTHER_TEST 0.0001

Q: Q: How can I make use of SpamAssassin plugins, that are not part of the Windows distribution?

A:	This is described in the topic "Components and Plugins".

Q: Why does the "URIBL_BLOCKED ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE" rule hit on any of my messages, what is it for and how can I avoid this?

A: URIBL (http://www.uribl.com) is a DNS-based Blackhole List which tracks IP addresses which are commonly used for sending spam mails. URIBL is enabled by default for SpamAssassin installations but allows only a certain amount of requests from the same IP every day. If this amount is exceeded, any further requests will be blocked by the URIBL servers with the info notification above. This typically happens for SpamAssassin installations that use public DNS resolvers such as Google. As any request that is forwarded via the Google servers has the same IP when it reaches the Blackhole list, all requests will share the same limit. For usage of an alternative DNS, please follow these instructions.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact us via email: spamassassin@jam-software.com