spamd vs. spamassassin

[Mike]

Darrin Chandler wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 11, 2006 at 08:38:07AM -0700, Nathan England wrote:
>   
>> I do not have spamd running at all. Procmailrc calls /usr/bin/spamassassin
>> It is better to run spamd instead? In which case, do I remove the procmail 
>> part? 
>>     
>
> spamd/spamc should be functionally equivalent to spamassassin, but
> *should* use less overhead. You should probably be using them.
>
> There are several ways to use spamassassin with various MTAs. The simple
> setup I've used with spamd/spamc is to put something like this in
> /etc/procmailrc:
>
> :0fw
> | /usr/local/bin/spamc
>
> which filters the mail through spamassassin and (important!) waits for
> it to finish. Then later procmail stuff can act on X-Spam-Status, etc.
>
> At this point, though... If you're asking these questions I recommend
> you read more spamassassin documentation. You'll get much better results
> from it if you spend some time getting to know it and configure it,
> train then bayesian stuff well, etc, etc.
>
>   

Also one good rule of thumb is to have it ignore emails that are too 
large for it. If a huge email gets in there and spamd it will bring your 
mail server to its knees. And its not a bad idea to drop privileges for 
security reasons. (especially if you run it as root)

Here is how i'd do a /etc/procmailrc

DROPPRIVS=yes
:0fw: spamassassin.lock
* < 256000
| /usr/local/bin/spamc


One of the big reasons for spamd/spamc is that this configuration works 
better in system/network wide configurations of spamassassin. If your 
just sitting there on your desktop running spamassassin you probably 
just want to run 'spamassassin' so your not wasting resources the 
majority of the time your not running mail through it. spamd/spamc also 
allows you to network between the c client and the daemon. So if your a 
huge installation you can setup spamd on a system just for that and 
spamc on each of the MTA or relays as not to compromise the performance 
of your mail systems themselves.

Atleast, this is my understanding of it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

-Mike