Re: [gentoo-server] exim + spamd: permissions errors when checking spam

[Jeroen Geilman]

fire-eyes wrote:
> I am using exim + spamd which comes with spamassassin.
>
> When a mail comes in, I get all sorts of funky errors about permissions.
> Googling didn't really help much. Below are the logs. Any ideas?
>
>
They're not funky errors; spamd is simply telling you that it cannot 
create a ~/.spamassassin directory for user "nobody" - which is not 
surprising, since nobody doesn't *have* a homedirectory.

This is a known limitation when running spamd from within exim's acls - 
it can only run as one user, since there is currently no way for exim to 
pass the username to spamd.
There are two solutions - either run spamd as one dedicated user who 
does have a homedirectory, say "spamd", or use the old procmail 
forwarding method which can and does work per-user.

The reason Exim can't do per-user spamchecking has to do with the way it 
processes messages - when the spamd ACL is evaluated, it doesn't yet 
know the final destination.

I found this out after some heavy Googling and detailed perusing of the 
Exim manual - which is very good by the way, *if* you can grasp its syntax.

I finally opted to just run as "nobody" and forget the per-user Bayes 
database - resulting in a significant amount of spam...

I'm currently moving back to postfix, which has worked for me in the past.

J

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