[Mimedefang] mimedefang letting some spams through...why?

David F. Skoll dfs at roaringpenguin.com
Wed Feb 3 09:52:32 EST 2010


Tony wrote:

> I'm going around in circles here, as a beginner it's hard to understand
> cryptic replies. Are you saying I should restore the above commands and
> look for the 'double-scan' problem elsewhere?

No.

Here's how the mail flow works:

1) During the DATA phase of the SMTP conversation, the mail is scanned
by MIMEDefang.  If you happen to call SpamAssassin from MIMEDefang, then
the mail gets scanned by SpamAssassin.

2) AFTER Sendmail concludes the SMTP conversation (by replying to the final
"." with a 2xx SMTP reply code), the mail gets handed over to the delivery
agent.  In your case, that's procmail.

3) The spamc line in .procmailrc calls SpamAssassin *again*, but this
time as you (not the defang user) and after MIMEDefang has utterly finished
with the message.

4) When the spamc command returns (possibly having altered the mail), procmail
drops it into your INBOX.

Regards,

David.



More information about the MIMEDefang mailing list