How do I teach Spam Assassin?

[Jonathan Gardner]

On Friday 12 March 2004 02:46 pm, Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> I've been collecting spam email that's gotten past my Fedora Core 1
> installation of spam assassin (spamassassin-2.63-0.2) and I'd like to
> "teach" spam assassin about these messages (update the heuristics to be
> able to filter these messages that are getting past the filter by
> default).
>
> Someone posted a command that does this on the list some time ago and
> I've unfortunately lost that message.  How can I teach spam assassin
> (system wide) about this email?  Thanks!
>

Short answer:

 - Get all your spam into a single file (mbox format).
 - Get all your ham (non-spam) into a single file (mbox format)

For me, I use procmail to sort my mail. I count anything that reaches my 
inbox as ham, anything in archive as ham, and anything in Junk as spam. Is 
sort all spam into the Junk folder, and I add files manually there that get 
through.

I have edited my crontab as follows:
$ export EDITOR=<your favorite editor>
$ crontab -e
Add the lines:

5 1 * * * sa-learn --ham --mbox /var/spool/mail/<your username>
5 2 * * * sa-learn --spam --mbox ~/mail/Junk
5 3 * * * sa-leran --ham --mbox ~/mail/archive

and save the file.
Check your crontab with "crontab -l".

This will be different depending on your configuration, but this should get 
you started.

Now, every day spam assassin will learn from the latest spam and ham.

-- 
Jonathan Gardner
jgardner at jonathangardner.net