KMail/SpamAssassin_and_ClamAV

Securing Kmail

You can secure Kmail by using SpamAssassin and ClamAV

SpamAssassin

This is tested for Spamassassin v3.1.0

You need Spamassassin emerged and configured. It is better to have the daemon spamd running, to avoid permanent program starting delays. "rc-update add spamd default" will start the daemon at startup. Access to spamassassin is then done through the client spamc.

You have three configuration files with version 3.x :

• v310.pre in /etc/mail/spamassassin is the plugin configuration file
• local.cf in /etc/mail/spamassassin is the system-wide configuration file
• user_prefs in /home/joe-user/.spamassassin is the local configuration file of joe-user

Whitelists and blacklists can be defined in local.cf or user_prefs like, for example (see this thread):

whitelist_from  *@kickingdragon.com 
whitelist_from  *@megatron.kickingdragon.com 
blacklist_from  blythe@01casinos.com 

Once everything is configured, you can play with spamassassin in console:

spamassassin -D < mail-message

or

spamassassin -D --lint

will show a lot of debug messages and inform you if the plugins are working etc.

The literature often says that spamassassin modifies the message headers. This is wrong. Spamassassin outputs a modified version of the mail to the output you specify.

spamassassin < mail-message > new-mail-message.txt will save the modified mail message for filtering.

ClamAV

Install ClamAV

emerge -av clamav

Include clamd in the default runlevel

rc-update add clamd default

Integrate these programms with Kmail

To integrate spamassassin and ClamAV in kmail, run the appropiate wizards (Tools -> Anti-Spam Wizard; Tools -> Anti-Virus Wizard).

With spamassasin, it will set up two filters which will be applied to classify incoming email. You can manually apply the filters on email which is wrongly classified - spamassassin's statistical learning rules will be updated when you do this.