[Mimedefang] [ot] spamassassin config error with bayes

[Rolf Loudon]

hello

Apologies that this is not technically a mimedefang issue.

I have MD calling spamassassin 2.63 in pretty much the usual way.
In /etc/mail/sa-mimdefang.cf I had left all the default values,hences 
use_bayes is set as is auto_learn. The default location for the bayes data is
/var/spool/MIMEDefang/.spammassassin (the home directory of the defang user).

Everything worked fairly well from day one (several months ago). I had the 
spam threshold set at around 7-8 and as the false positives decreased over 
time have gradually brought it down to where it is now, 5. Have not had a 
false positive for a long time.

Two days ago I decided that as /var/spool/MIMEDefang is on a ramdisk, it 
would be advisable to move the bayes data elsewhere in the event of it 
being lost due to a reboot etc.

So I stopped MD and copied the bayes data elsewhere and set bayes_path to 
point at it. File permissions and ownerships all checks out. Then I did 
some reading on some other options available to put in sa-mimedefang.cf. In 
particular I set (and I acknowledge this was a 
mistake)  bayes_auto_learn_threshold_spam to 8 (default is 12). I 
misunderstood the effect of doing this.

Now I am getting lots of false positives. I've removed the 
bayes_auto_learn_threshold_spam config. Its not made much difference. I 
then thought I've poisoned the bayes data, so I deleted it hoping that it 
would start again and go through the re-learning again. But it has not 
created any files at all in the path (bayes_path) that I set.

Any advice or help would be appreciated.

thanks

rolf.