Zimbra learning Spam

Question

We are using a Zimbra intallation on the version 8.6.0 and have diffuclty with the Spam recognition. It's an installation all on one single server and we collected in the mean time over 1000 Spam mails.

Now we invested time to understand the way how Zimbra teachs Spamassassin new rules and there are two open questions in the process.

1. How does Zimbra create the new rules for the Spamassassin?
2. Where is the file saved with the rules?
3. Is there a way to check if the creation of the new rules worked as designed?
4. Is there an other possibilaty why Spamassassin do not learn from the mails which are marked as spam from the Users? They get send to the Zimbra Spam mailbox and get deleted as designed in the night after learning them.

The recognition of mails are very poor and even the same mail from the same adress can be tagged and after a few hours when it comes once more, it does not get marked from SA.

Thank you a lot for your time and help.

Answer 1

Zimbra uses most of the functionality of spamassassin. Only it is wrapped with some management tools from zimbra itself. For Zimbra 8.6+ (maybe older versions also) You can check if your system is configured for updates with:

zmlocalconfig antispam_enable_rule_updates

If it is false, you can enable it with:

zmlocalconfig -e antispam_enable_rule_updates=true
zmamavisdctl restart
zmmtactl restart

You can check if the configuration is correct by:

$ crontab -l | grep zmsa
45 0 * * * . /opt/zimbra/.bashrc; /opt/zimbra/libexec/zmsaupdate

And at last you can check for the latest updates in /opt/zimbra/data/spamassassin/state/ and subdirs in there

If you want to configure spamassassin you can create a file /opt/zimbra/data/spamassassin/localrules/sauser.cf with your own settings.

After looking into spamassassin, you also can try to use some RBL's that can be done in the admin interface in the MTA settings.

Answer 2

I tried a lot of time to learn spamassasin rules in Zimbra and never get it. The detection is really poor and you have no configuration at all.

Since 6 months I use now mailcleaner. This is an open-source anti-spam filter who run on a separate VM and check the spam before Zimbra. Now the Zimbra server is really less charged and it works a lot better than before. You can choose if you tag it or leave it in the quarantine for each user. And it's completely free!