How to block "mail.spammer.com" utilizing SPAMASSA

Hey,
We are finding it necessary to occassionally block email domains. How can we block an email domain "mail.spammer.com" with spamassassin working in conjunction with sendmail as the MTA? When I look at the files for spamassassin under /etc/mail/spamassassin/ I don't exactly see a file that I would add the "spammer.com" domain name to for denying spam from that address. Currently we are using the 'access' file to add email domains to be blocked but understatnd Spamassassin is a better way to go. Can someone specify how to use spamassassin to block mail.spammer.com?

mtsal
:)

Have you gone to there website and had a look at the documentation??

I have and found help for installation which we have performed just fine. However, the documentation on getting started to block or utilize it hasn't been very helpful. About the closest we came was at: http://spamassassin.rediris.es/doc.html then seeing the 'Walk-throughs and How-To's" near the end of the bottom of the page w/out any real assistance on specifically "How to begin blocking domains" If you or someone else can provide an example on exactly how to block mail.spammer.com , I think we could go on just that. Thanks for the response. :wink:

It's quite simple - just add "blacklist_from *@mail.spammer.com" to your spamassassin config file. I agree, though, Spamassassin's configuration is incredibly poorly documented. I haven't been able to find any documentation on it at all myself.

Hi Dolda,
Thank you for replying. The only files we found under the /etc/mail/spamassassin/ directory were: local.cf , spamassassin-default.rc , spamassassin-spamc.rc , and spamassassin-helper.sh. Guess we're used to seeing a .cfg ending and just want to be certain. Unfortunately, no one has written a book on SPAMASSASSIN. Amazon turned up no results. Perhaps a bit wee more down the road, ay?!

What is so hot about spamassassin if the /etc/mail/access file can do pretty much the same thing which is what we are currently using?

Would the config file you are referring to be the local.cf :?: Nonetheless, I'll give it a whirl. Thanks. :)

mtsal

I believe it would be the local.cf file.

What is so hot with spamassassin is the fact that you don't just blacklist domains. The idea with spamassassin is that it looks at each mail and tries to determine from the contents if it's SPAM or not. So technically, you should need to blacklist at all with spamassassin. I use spamassassin at home to get rid of SPAM - I haven't blacklisted anything at all and it works very well.

I entered "blacklist_from *@yahoo.com" in the local.cf file under /etc/mail/spamassassin then restarted spamassassin and sendmail, but still received a test email from yahoo. :?: Does this mean that the address isprofession@yahoo.com we created for testing from Yahoo isn't spam and therefore, it didn't block it?

mtsal

If it's from an address in the blacklist, it doesn't matter if it's really spam or not - it will be ruled out anyway. I am under the impression that you haven't configured sendmail to use spamasassin. What steps have you takes to ensure that it does?

You're probably right. Unless, sendmail and spamassassin are somehow linked, (I assumed this because they were both under the /etc/mail directory) no one has done anything to the configuration of sendmail to work with spamassassin. Sorry, didn't realize there was more involved to have Sendmail and Spamassassin working together. What exactly has to be tweaked on sendmail's end to acknowledge/work with spamassassin?

You have to make sendmail filter all mails through spamassassin somehow. There are several ways to do that, but adding a procmail recipe is probably the easiest. Try adding this to your /etc/procmailrc:

Code:

---

:0fw
|/usr/bin/spamassassin -P

---

Of course, you have to edit it to actually have the correct path to spamassassin, but /usr/bin/spamassassin is the most common one. Similarly, if you use spamd and spamc, you have to use /usr/bin/spamc instead of /usr/bin/spamassassin -P.