Package: spamassassin
Version: 4.0.1-3
Severity: serious
Tags: patch
Debian documentation about sa-update is obsolete and misleading,
so it needs to be updated before the next release (together with
a few other things, see below) so that the end user can know what
to do.
I've just noticed that on my laptop, sa-update is not run, meaning
that important changes (e.g. due to evolution of blacklists) are
absent.
About sa-update, /usr/share/doc/spamassassin/README.Debian.gz says:
There is a cron job in /etc/cron.daily/spamassassin that will
automatically run sa-update and reload spamd every day if it is
enabled. To enable this script, edit
/etc/default/spamassassin. [...]
But this file is missing.
Actually, /etc/cron.daily/spamassassin says:
# This script does not do anything by default. If you are using systemd,
# invoke "systemctl enable --now spamassassin-maintenance.timer" to enable
# spamassassin's daily maintenance systemd timer. If you are not using
# systemd, or otherwise prefer to use cron for daily maintenance, set CRON=1
# in /etc/cron.daily/spamassassin
I've attached a patch for /usr/share/doc/spamassassin/README.Debian.gz,
which also fixes other things:
* /etc/default/spamassassin -> /etc/default/spamd
* Removed the paragraph about bug 278030 (archived in 2007).
* Updated the 2 wiki URLs (the first one was not even redirecting
to the expected page).
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 13.0
APT prefers unstable-debug
APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'testing-security'), (500,
'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500,
'proposed-updates-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500,
'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 6.12.32-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
Versions of packages spamassassin depends on:
ii adduser 3.152
ii curl 8.14.1-1
ii libhtml-parser-perl 3.83-1+b2
ii libhttp-date-perl 6.06-1
ii libio-string-perl 1.08-4
ii libmail-dkim-perl 1.20240923-1
ii libnet-dns-perl 1.50-1
ii libnetaddr-ip-perl 4.079+dfsg-2+b5
ii libsocket6-perl 0.29-3+b4
ii libsys-hostname-long-perl 1.5-3
ii libwww-perl 6.78-1
ii perl [libarchive-tar-perl] 5.40.1-3
ii w3m 0.5.3+git20230121-2.1
Versions of packages spamassassin recommends:
ii gnupg 2.4.7-21
ii libbsd-resource-perl 1.2911-2+b4
ii libmail-dmarc-perl 1.20240314-1
ii libmail-spf-perl 3.20250505-1
ii perl [libsys-syslog-perl] 5.40.1-3
ii sa-compile 4.0.1-3
ii spamc 4.0.1-3
Versions of packages spamassassin suggests:
ii libdbi-perl 1.647-1
pn libencode-detect-perl <none>
pn libgeoip2-perl <none>
ii libio-socket-ssl-perl 2.089-1
pn libnet-patricia-perl <none>
ii perl [libcompress-zlib-perl] 5.40.1-3
pn pyzor <none>
pn razor <none>
-- no debconf information
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vinc...@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
--- a/debian/spamassassin.README.Debian 2023-07-26 03:53:08.000000000 +0200
+++ b/debian/spamassassin.README.Debian 2025-06-19 02:37:35.345974829 +0200
@@ -4,13 +4,16 @@
sa-update
---------
-There is a cron job in /etc/cron.daily/spamassassin that will
-automatically run sa-update and reload spamd every day if it is
-enabled. To enable this script, edit
-/etc/default/spamassassin. sa-update will store the latest set of
-rules distributed by upstream to a directory under
-/var/lib/spamassassin. If sa-compile is installed, the rule updates
-will be automatically compiled after download (see below).
+To run sa-update and reload spamd every day, enable spamassassin's
+daily maintenance systemd timer by invoking
+"systemctl enable --now spamassassin-maintenance.timer".
+If you are not using systemd, or otherwise prefer to use cron for
+daily maintenance, set CRON=1 in /etc/cron.daily/spamassassin.
+
+sa-update will store the latest set of rules distributed by upstream
+to a directory under /var/lib/spamassassin. If sa-compile is installed,
+the rule updates will be automatically compiled after download (see
+below).
Note that sa-update requires gnupg in order to function. Because the
sa-update functionality is optional, the gnupg package is listed as a
@@ -80,7 +83,7 @@
installations. To enable it, use "systemctl enable spamassassin" on
systems using systemd, or "update-rc.d spamassassin enable" for systems
using other init systems. To change the command
-line options, please edit /etc/default/spamassassin.
+line options, please edit /etc/default/spamd.
If you intend to use Bayes sitewide, it is recommended that you set up
an SQL-based Bayes storage module. (You may also want to store scores
@@ -91,9 +94,6 @@
access to the database can read and write it freely, meaning users
could corrupt other users' Bayes databases.
-Please note that the --auth-ident option does not work with pidentd or
-gidentd. See http://bugs.debian.org/278030 for more information.
-
Poor Performance
----------------
@@ -114,7 +114,7 @@
You can also disable automatic expiry by setting the
"bayes_auto_expire 0" option in your configuration and running
sa-learn --force-expire from a cronjob. See
-http://wiki.spamassassin.org/BayesForceExpire
+https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SPAMASSASSIN/BayesForceExpire
Mail stream integration
-----------------------
@@ -126,7 +126,7 @@
There is a large amount of information on setting spamassassin up with
your mail system at
-http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/UsingSpamAssassin.
+https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SPAMASSASSIN/UsingSpamAssassin
Configuration Files
-------------------
