[Mimedefang] MimeDefang and SpamAssassin

[listuser at numbnuts.net]

On Fri, 16 May 2003, Albert E. Whale, CISSP wrote:

> 
> 
> VCI Help Desk wrote:
> 
> >    Hi,
> >
> >    I read an earlier post that MimeDefang disables the Bayes filters. Is
> >this true? I can't find any documentation in MimeDefang or SpamAssassin to
> >support this.
> >
> >      Bill Dunn
> >
> 
> Bill,
> 
> The answer to that is no.  Once you manually prime the bayes pump (use 
> the sa-learn command), the filtering will take off on it's own.  You 
> will need to set the following variables in the 
> /etc/mail/assassin/sa-mimedefang.cf files:
> 
> auto_learn 1
> use_bayes 1
> bayes_path    /var/spool/MIMEDefang/bayes
> 
> That should get you started.

Doesn't this however run one large single Bayes DB for the entire system
rather than for each user?  That's what I've been led to believe from the
SA mailing list.  This would in effect make Bayes rather useless.  Rather
than focusing on one user and the type of mail that one user receives,
Bayes would have to consider all mail to all users to develop an
impression of what it thinks is spam and ham.  With more than a handful of 
users that latter would be pointless.  Bayes works best when it only 
focuses on a single users mail IMHO.  The same can be said about SA's 
auto-whitelisting.  It would be rather pointless to run the AWL sitewide.  
It too needs to focus on a single user's mail.

Justin