----- Original Message ----
From: Andrew Sackville-West
<andrew@farwestbilliards.com>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 5:45:52 PM
Subject: Re: spamassassin running as 'nobody' causes problems
On Mon, Jan 29, 2007 at 05:06:18PM -0800, Andrew
Sackville-West wrote:
> howdy folks.
>
> I've recently abandoned my increasingly unwieldy bogofilter
> implementation in favor of spamassassin: I'm no longer the only one
> getting mail through this server; and the bogofilter databases were
> gradually getting out of whack.
>
> So aptitude install spamassassin, works like a charm. A couple tweaks
> in exim4.conf and its rolling along. But I'm getting these messages in
> /var/log/mail.log
>
> Jan 29 10:32:36 bigmomma spamd[32442]: spamd: connection from bigmomma
> [127.0.0.1] at port 41420
> Jan 29 10:32:36 bigmomma spamd[32442]: spamd: setuid to nobody
> succeeded
> Jan 29 10:32:36 bigmomma spamd[32442]: spamd: creating default_prefs:
> /nonexistent/.spamassassin/user_prefs
> Jan 29 10:32:36 bigmomma spamd[32442]: mkdir /nonexistent: Permission
> denied at /usr/share/perl5/Mail/SpamAssassin.pm line 1530
> Jan 29 10:32:36 bigmomma spamd[32442]: config: cannot write to
> /nonexistent/.spamassassin/user_prefs: No such file or directory
> Jan 29 10:32:36 bigmomma spamd[32442]: spamd: failed to create
> readable default_prefs: /nonexistent/.spamassassin/user_prefs
> Jan 29 10:32:36 bigmomma spamd[32442]: mkdir /nonexistent: Permission
> denied at /usr/share/perl5/Mail/SpamAssassin.pm line 1530
> Jan 29 10:32:36 bigmomma spamd[32442]: spamd: checking message
> <20070129190811.6a637656@.bredbandsbolaget.se> for nobody:65534
> Jan 29 10:32:49 bigmomma spamd[32442]: mkdir /nonexistent: Permission
> denied at /usr/share/perl5/Mail/SpamAssassin.pm line 1530
> Jan 29 10:32:49 bigmomma spamd[32442]: locker: safe_lock: cannot
> create tmp lockfile
> /nonexistent/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.lock.bigmomma.
> 32442 for /nonexistent/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.lock: No such file
> or
directory
> Jan 29 10:32:49 bigmomma spamd[32442]: auto-whitelist: open of
> auto-whitelist file failed: locker: safe_lock: cannot create tmp
> lockfile /non
> existent/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.lock.bigmomma.32442 for
> /nonexistent/.spamassassin/auto-whitelist.lock: No such file or
> directory
> Jan 29 10:32:49 bigmomma spamd[32442]: spamd: clean message (0.5/5.0)
> for nobody:65534 in 12.8 seconds, 6620 bytes.
> Jan 29 10:32:49 bigmomma spamd[32442]: spamd: result: . 0 -
> PLING_PLING
> scantime=12.8,size=6620,user=nobody,uid=65534,required_score=5.0,rhos
> t=bigmomma,raddr=127.0.0.1,rport=41420,mid=<20070129190811.6a637656@.bredbandsbolaget.se>,autolearn=no
>
>
> As I understand it, and frmo a little google, spamd changes its uid to
> 'nobody' when it get a message to scan. This causes a problem as it
> tries to update the AWL and bayes database files in
its $HOME with is
> nonexistent. One recommendation I found was to change the user for
> spamd from nobody to spamd, and create that user for just this
> purpose. This seems fine, but I don't like to migrate too far from
> default configs. Any other suggestions? is there something simple I'm
> missing here? (probably). is this new user, spamd, the way to go or
> should I be tweaking some other conf to make this work.
okay solved to my satisfaction:
modified /etc/default/spamassassin thus:
OPTIONS="--create-prefs --max-children 5 --helper-home-dir -D
-x --virtual-config-dir=/srv/Mail/spamassassin"
-x turns off the per-user configs, so its stops trying to create
/nonexistent...
--virtual-config-dir=... does just that, point spamd to the specified
directory for its AWL files and bayes_* files.
seems to work for me, though that -D sure puts up lots of nice
output
:)
thanks all
A