4 Integrating SpamAssassin Into getmail

If you'd like getmail to invoke SpamAssassin, you can do it as follows:

First we must install SpamAssassin. As root, we run

apt-get install spamassassin spamc

Then we must configure SpamAssassin. This can be done in the file /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf. A valid file could look like this:

vi /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf

rewrite_header Subject *****SPAM*****

required_score 5.0

use_bayes 1
bayes_auto_learn 1
bayes_ignore_header X-Bogosity
bayes_ignore_header X-Spam-Flag
bayes_ignore_header X-Spam-Status
bayes_ignore_header X-getmail-filter-classifier

(The comments in /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf will tell you more about the above settings.)

If you enable Bayes (use_bayes 1), it is important that you put the line

bayes_ignore_header X-getmail-filter-classifier

into /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf so that Bayes ignores headers added by getmail.

Finally we must enable the SpamAssassin daemon by setting ENABLED to 1 in /etc/default/spamassassin:

vi /etc/default/spamassassin

[...]
ENABLED=1
[...]

Then we start the SpamAssassin daemon:

/etc/init.d/spamassassin start

Now log in as falko again on the command line and open ~/.getmail/getmailrc and add the following [filter] section:

vi ~/.getmail/getmailrc

[...]

[filter]
type = Filter_external
path = /usr/bin/spamc
arguments = ("-s 250000", )

(If this is not your first [filter] section, you must rename the first [filter] section to [filter-1], the second one to [filter-2], and so on.)

That's it. SpamAssassin is now integrated into getmail.

5 Integrating ClamAV

ClamAV is a project that publishes new releases very often, and once a new release is published, old versions will print out warnings. Therefore we must make sure that we install the latest ClamAV release by adding the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list (as root):

vi /etc/apt/sources.list

[...]
deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile etch/volatile main contrib non-free
[...]

Afterwards we update our packages database:

apt-get update

(- if you get GPG warnings, you can ignore them -)

and install ClamAV:

apt-get install clamav clamav-base clamav-daemon clamav-freshclam

Then log in as the user falko again and edit ~/.getmail/getmailrc. If you want getmail to delete virus emails, add the following filter:

vi ~/.getmail/getmailrc

[...]

# Drop infected messages
[filter]
type = Filter_classifier
path = /usr/bin/clamdscan
arguments = ("--stdout", "--no-summary", "-")
exitcodes_drop = (1, )

If you want getmail to deliver infected messages, add the following filter instead:

vi ~/.getmail/getmailrc

[...]

# Keep infected messages
[filter]
type = Filter_classifier
path = /usr/bin/clamddscan
arguments = ("--stdout", "--no-summary", "-")
exitcodes_keep = (0,1)

Again, keep in mind what I said about multiple [filter] sections in the previous chapter:

If this is not your first [filter] section, you must rename the first [filter] section to [filter-1], the second one to [filter-2], and so on.

That's it for the ClamAV integration.