When does SpamAssassin begin to use the spam filter database for filtering mails?

• Applies to: All DV
  • Difficulty: Medium
  • Time Needed: 10
  • Tools Required: SSH, root access, vi knowledge

Introduction

According to the Spamassassin documentation, the Bayes system is not activated until a certain number of ham (non-spam) and spam has been learned. The default is 200 of each ham and spam messages. It means that SpamAssassin begins to filter mails (according to your trainings) after 200 spam mails and 200 non-spam mails were learned. These statistics are needed to distinguish spam mails.

Requirements

Before you start, this article has the following dependencies:

• You must have SSH access set up for root or a sudo user.
  • Connecting via SSH to your server
  • How do I enable root access to my DV?
  • How do I disable SSH login for the root user?

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Solution

This default value could be changed in /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf by using the following SpamAssassin options:

bayes_min_ham_num 100
bayes_min_spam_num 100 

SpamAssassin can be trained per mailbox basis in Plesk at: Mailname->Spam Filter->Training page.