Re: [exim] ACL, transport, & SpamAssassin

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Author: Heiko Schlittermann
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] ACL, transport, & SpamAssassin
Hello Antonio,

Antonio Leding <dev@???> (Sa 04 Feb 2012 04:19:20 CET):
> In reading the Exim documentation, it is clear that SpamAsassin can be called by Exim at the desired time by using ACL control. Then, it seems that SpamAssassin will hand back a SPAM score & report so that Exim can then take the information and move forward with message processing. With that in mind, here are my questions:


The "desired time" will almost always be the DATA ACL, it's the only
place, where you have the message to scan. Keep in mind, that at the time of
the DATA ACL you may have more than one recipient, thus scanning it with per
recipient rules can't be done here. (But - you can limit the number of
recipients per message in the RCPT ACL, this would give you the
possibility of implementing something that is about a per recipient rule
(ignoring things as aliases and so on.))

Other modes of interaction with SA are the system filter and the
transports filter. The latter one will be called once per transport, and
since normally a transport is called for each recipient, you may
implement per recipient spamassassin rules.

Using SA in the ACL is using it as an "spam evaluator", just *returning*
you the spam status, spam report, … of the message. Using SA as a filter
is using it really as a *filter*, the message passes SA completly. This
filter mode allows SA to modify the message (rewrite the subject,
rewrite the body). If you use SA as an evaluator (in the DATA ACL), the
modification of the subject line (and possibly insertion of additional
header lines) is completly up to Exim.

I'd prefer the DATA ACL, but you may have reasons not to do.

> 1) Are Exim ACL and Transport modes mutually exclusive or can they work in tandem?


I wouldn't say that it's mutually exclusive, but probably you're doing
the scan twice.

--
Heiko :: dresden : linux : SCHLITTERMANN.de
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