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Bug 703490 - Stop invoking spamc, just use spamassassin
Stop invoking spamc, just use spamassassin
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: evolution
Classification: Applications
Component: Plugins
3.6.x (obsolete)
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: evolution-plugin-maintainers
Evolution QA team
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2013-07-02 21:18 UTC by msocorcim
Modified: 2013-07-08 04:10 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 3.5/3.6



Description msocorcim 2013-07-02 21:18:19 UTC
The spamassassin plugin calls spamc without a valid argument

it appears the cause is spamc being invoked by evolution without a valid argument

ps aux shows hundreds like: 

4111  0.0  0.0   0 0 ? Z  16:26   0:00 [spamc] <defunct>

# od -c /proc/4111/cmdline 

shows nulls for the argument thus: 0000000

since spamc is an agent that forwards a mail to spamd for processing mails
it seems like spamd would inform evolution what socket to use. apparently
this process is not robust and fails silently.

A somewhat vituperative discussion on the issue can be read here:

https://issues.apache.org/SpamAssassin/show_bug.cgi?id=6939

My personal history with this issue is that it's been intermittent on Fedora 14 through 18 and comes and goes with reboots and loading unloading Evolution and starting/restarting spamassassin service.  I haven't found any replicable way to either fix or break the system.  

Maillog shows entries for each failed invocation like:

... spamc[nnn]:connect(AF_UNIX) to spamd failed: Connection refused
Comment 1 Matthew Barnes 2013-07-02 21:54:17 UTC
I'm going to use this bug as an opportunity to drastically simplify our SA module, given that SA developers have all but stated the software is not really intended for use by mail clients, and Evolution defaults to and strongly recommends Bogofilter over SA anyway for client-side spam filtering.
Comment 2 msocorcim 2013-07-03 00:12:48 UTC
I found a discrepancy in /var/log/maillog relating to the spamc spamd issue

Launch Evolution and in maillog there appears:
 spamd[7758]: spamd: got connection over /run/user/500/spamd-socket-path-UVH0ZWspamd-socket-path-UVH0ZW

the socket is actually at /var/run/user/500/spamd-socket-path-UVH0ZWspamd-socket-path-UVH0ZW

(/var was missing from the beginning of the path reported by spamd)
Comment 3 Matthew Barnes 2013-07-08 04:10:00 UTC
Fixed for Evolution 3.9.5 in:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/evolution/commit/?id=3b8a9ed601e38a6a0d94fa661fccd4a5000f4b0e