Spamassassin daemon running aimlessly

[brownh@hartford-hwp.com (Haines Brown)]

I'm finding the documentation cryptic, and need simple direction. 

I ran # spamd -cd, and assumed it would check my incoming mail
according to a preferences file, and that it would dump spam into a
location such as ~/mail/spam.  

While I can start the spamd process with the two options OK, none of
the other things happen. Incoming mail is not checked, no
~/.spamassassin/user_prefs file is created, and no spam dump file is
created.  

I'm running postfix MTA and rmail/emacs for MUA under debian 3.0r1.

Haines Brown