[sork] vacation/forward with spamassassin

[Eric Rostetter]

Quoting Joe Hamelin <joe at nethead.com>:

> I'm running a bsd box with horde/imp and spamassassin.  I'm using
> spamd which seems to require a line in .forward to pass the mail to
> procmail for spamd to process.

You should be able to configure your mailer to automatically run procmail
instead of relying on .forward files to do so (but that does depend on your
mail MTA software).

> I've installed the new (2.2.1)
> versions of vacation and forward and have found that they wipe out
> .forward and replace it with what they want and then rm the file when
> they are disabled.

Correct.  This is the current state of things in those modules.
(A patch was recently proposed to "parse" the .forward file so as to
allow preserving other content, but that is still under investigation).

> This, of course, doesn't work well with
> spamassassin.

In your rather archaic setup it doesn't.  In general they can co-exist.
It is really your procmail setup that is the issue though.

> I'd like to have it so that all forwarded and vacationed mail is
> passed through spamd before any other action is taken.

This would be better done at a higher level (e.g. in the MTA, or in
procmail invoked by the MTA) rather than in a .forward file.

> If not that,
> at least have the old .forward file replaced when forward or vacation
> is disabled.

That could in theory be done, but it causes some problems (e.g. I set
a forward, then set a different forward.  When I remove the forward,
I expect there not to be one, but if I restore the previous file there
will still be a forward).  So this isn't a trivial change that can
be easily installed.

> Is there a solution in the works or should I just hack the php to fix
> it for just my site?

It would be a major effort to hack the php to work in a consistent manor.
You would need, as has been previously proposed, an intellegent .forward
file parser.

Instead I would suggest you remove the need for your convoluted
MTA -> .forward -> procmail -> spamassassin -> ??? chain and replace it
with a more efficient and straight forward chain (MTA -> procmail ->
spamassassin -> inbox comes to mind).

> Regards,
>
> Joe Hamelin

--
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

Why get even? Get odd!