Mailman 3 January 2004 - SpamBayes

[slightly OT] spammer 'random' words that are addressee-related?
by Denis Haskin Aug. 18, 2004

Aug. 18, 2004

(This isn't *quite* a spambayes question but I think there are knowledgable people here <grin> who can point me in the right direction to get more info. Feel free to declare this too off-topic and send me someplace else.) Like many of you (I'm sure), I'm sysadmin/network ops/hardware tech/customer support/etc for my family's home network. My wife showed me some spam she got this morning that included the usual 'random' words in the subject, but she was wondering if the words maybe weren't so random. The words seemed related to 2 email lists she's on. Now maybe this is just complete coincidence, but is it possible in fact that her email address was harvested somewhere and words were picked up from the harvesting context to be used when constructing spam to her? This seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of return... Also, we're *pretty* sure that both of these email lists are pretty well protected (e.g. they're not archived in any public place as far was we know). Also, they're obscure and small enough that I find it hard to believe it would be worth spammers' while to 'infiltrate' these lists (as they do with yahoo groups). It also occurred to me that perhaps someone else on these lists has a virus which is harvesting this from a local PC and sending it off to a spammer? Anyone have any thoughts? Is there any web site that catalogs known spamming tactics? Thanks, dwh

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RE: [Spambayes] Service Stopped working under XP
by Tony Meyer March 23, 2004

March 23, 2004

> Yesterday morning, my service just stopped working. I can still run > SpamBayes from the command prompt through python, but no > matter how I try, the service starts and then stops. > > I have been looking for logs but can't find them. Services are good at hiding those sorts of things :) There should be logs in your temp directory, which is probably 'C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Temp'. If not, you can get the service to output to a console window by running 'pop3proxy_service.py debug'. =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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Architecture of SpamBayes Application
by Rohit Upadhyay Feb. 3, 2004

Feb. 3, 2004

Hello, I want to know the internal logic & architecture of the Spambayes application - both the outlook2000 plug-in & the imap filter. I looked up some documents but wasn't able to get in-depth info. Can anyone help me with this? Also, will the imap filter score messages as the outlook plugin does? Thanks for help, Rohit Upadhyay "We must do the best we can with what we have." ------------------------------------------------------------------- "The statements and opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Oracle Corporation."

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.procmailrc ImportError Shared Object not found?
by cb＠netalyst.com Feb. 2, 2004

Feb. 2, 2004

when I attempt to run sb_filter.py via .procmailrc, I get the following error: ImportError: Shared object "libdb3.so.3" not found I'd be grateful for troubleshooting hints. SETUP: I'm running on a machine where I don't have root privileges, so I installed this way: python2.2 setup.py install --home /usr/home/netalyst/usr/local/ --install-purelib /usr/home/netalyst/usr/local/lib/python2.2 --install-platlib /usr/home/netalyst/usr/local/lib/python2.2 which seemed to work, and then initialized .hammie.db: setenv PYTHONPATH /usr/home/netalyst/usr/local/lib/python2.2 python2.2 /usr/home/netalyst/usr/local/bin/sb_filter.py -d .hammie.db -n which also worked. However, the .procmailrc script below fails, with the "libdb3.so.3 not found" error .procmailrc LOGFILE=pmlog PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/home/netalyst/bin:/usr/home/netalyst/usr/b in:/usr/home/netalyst/usr/local/bin PYTHONPATH=/usr/home/netalyst/usr/local/lib/python2.2 :0fw:hamlock | /usr/local/bin/python2.2 /usr/home/netalyst/usr/local/bin/sb_filter.py -d .hammie.db .. etc.

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RE: [Spambayes] Corrupt database
by Tony Meyer Feb. 2, 2004

Feb. 2, 2004

> Thanks for your reply! I didn't originally realise this was an FAQ. > Sorry for that. No worries. > I've switched to using a pickle in the mean time, and I must > say that I do not really notice any changes in speed. Is there > a good reason why the pickle isn't the default? That would seem more > user-friendly to me. Well, bsddb should be the better option for the sort of db use that SpamBayes needs. I believe that speed changes could be quite noticeable in certain situations (slower machines, larger databases, and so on). OTOH, that is one of the options that the developers has discussed. We'd really like to get this solved, though :) > Is it possible to add more logging to the database access? Not as far as I am aware. The main problem is that we're really not all that sure where the problem is occurring. It doesn't really help that none of the developers (IIRC) are bsddb experts :) > Is there any way I could help in debugging this? I'm not a python > programmr, but have ample experience in perl and java. If there's any way that you are able to reproduce the problem, then knowing what it was would be extremely helpful (if we know what causes it, it should be simple to solve). Otherwise, just suggestions of possible causes could be helpful (for example, we suspect that one cause might be that users close the browser window while training, so the next release will handle that better). > And I would > like to do something to contribute to this great project :) A phrase we love to see :) If it's not with this, there are lots of other ways to help, including ones that don't need Python programming (although if you know perl & java then the python code should be pretty simple to get). The FAQ and wiki (the wiki is more up-to-date, I think) have stuff about how people can help :) > I'll give this a try. Would it be of interest for you to know > which one was corrupted? Yes, it would. The message-info one has typically been the most troublesome, and has also had the most improvements made to it (although, IIRC, these have all been since the last release...). It's not always that one, though. > It has been an uncommon experience with this version (1.0a7), > although it happened quite often with an earlier version (1.0a5 I think), > especially when reviewing classified messages. I'm not sure, > but I think you guys fixed a lot of the issues already. Yes, there definitely have been quite a few fixes already, plus there are definitely more that will appear in the next release. > I wouldn't mind investing some time into this issue (since > it's an faq, more people might benefit from it), but could you > give me some information how to get started? > As it stands I have no clue as to why it happened. Nor do we, which is the problem, really. Most of our suspicions have been that changes are being made to the database, and then SpamBayes is quitting without saving the database. We *should* be saving after all changes (now) though, so that shouldn't be a problem anymore. Sorry I can't give more direction here - I'd certainly love to be able to point you at a list of things to try to break it! Some of the discussion in the spambayes-dev list might be of interest (and might include things I've forgotten). If you google for '"spambayes-dev" run recovery' or something like that you should find most of the stuff. Apologies for the delay in replying; 'real work' has been busy recently :) =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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T H A N K Y O U S O V E R Y M U C H!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
by Wally Whiteside Jan. 31, 2004

Jan. 31, 2004

I'm using xp\outlook 2000. The last four months I've hated to open my e-mail because of the amount of SPAM. I watch Techtv and they said to try SPAMBAYES and WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In just three day the difference is SO INCREDIBLE. I'm using ver 0.81 Thank You Again, Walter I LOVE YOU GUYS & GALS P.S. I've been out of work so I can't afford to donate right now, but soon.

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RE: Spambaye software won't register the DLL
by Kevin Kleinfelter Jan. 31, 2004

Jan. 31, 2004

On occasion I run into this problem. Here's what's worked for me: Open a command promptb in "C:\Program Files\Spambayes Outlook Addin" and type "regsvr32 /i spambayes_addin.dll". [SNIP] >but to no avail. I still get the "Unable to register the DLL/OCX: >DllRegisterServer failed; code 0x00000000" (see screen capture image below). >Outook is shut down and nothing is running other than system processes but >that does not help.... Any thoughts would be most appreciated. [SNIP]

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RE: [Spambayes] Upgrade pointers please
by Tony Meyer Jan. 31, 2004

Jan. 31, 2004

> I have a /small/ query/comment about the web UI and > functionality when it's > used in conjunction with the pop3proxy_service.py on a > Windows Server: there's a "Save & Shutdown" button on most > pages. If one does use it then the service stops. > This button therefore seems to me to be doing something > slightly illogical in this context - in most instances when > running as a service one does NOT want to shutdown after > saving any changes or after training etc - that's the whole > point of running as a service. This seems a perfectly valid point to me. I've opened a feature request so this gets done at some point (feel free to add to it if you like). Removing/altering the button is very simple, but detecting that we're running as a service isn't, at least at the moment. It'll get done sometime, although not necessarily soon :) <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=887984&group_id=61 702&atid=498106> Note that the "Save & Shutdown" button doesn't actually do any saving anymore, anyway. Config changes are saved when you click save on the config page, and the database is saved each time you click train on a review page. So it's perfectly safe to ignore it when running as a service. =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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RE: [Spambayes] is this a bug in pop3proxy
by Tony Meyer Jan. 31, 2004

Jan. 31, 2004

> I have a similar problem. I get the errors every day now. > It happened right after I added a 3rd email account. [...] > fileobj = self.myfileobj = __builtin__.open(filename, > mode or 'rb')IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or > directory: 'pop3proxy-spam-cache\\1074805410' What's happening is either that something is removing files from SpamBayes' cache directories, which it really doesn't like (although it handles it better in the next release), or SpamBayes is somehow thinking that there are files there that aren't. The most common reason for this error is that anti-virus software is 'quarantining' files in the cache directories. Since the files in there are copies of incoming mail, if you get viruses through email, copies will be stored in the caches. This is harmless, because those files are never executed, and they expire after seven days. Anti-virus software doesn't know that, though, so removes the files. If this is the cause, then it's difficult to get around - the best solution is to ignore the errors - with the next release they'll be less intrusive anyway. =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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RE: [Spambayes] Duplication
by Tony Meyer Jan. 31, 2004

Jan. 31, 2004

> My Spambays makes copies of certain e-mail, > even though they have been evaluated at 0% for spam) > and puts one copy in "inbox" and the other in "Spam." Do you have SpamBayes set to move or copy email? Could you send us a copy of your most recent log file? It should have clues about what is happening here. =Tony Meyer --- Please always include the list (spambayes(a)python.org) in your replies (reply-all), and please don't send me personal mail about SpamBayes. This way, you get everyone's help, and avoid a lack of replies when I'm busy.

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