[Mailman-Users] Attempt to block spam using X-Spam-Flag blocks allmessages to list

[Mark Sapiro]

Kelly Jones wrote:

>One of my users added this as a spam filter:
>
>^x-spam-flag:.*yes
>
>(all lower case since spamfilter regexps are case-insensitive--
>hyphens not backslashed by accident),


It doesn't matter. '-' has no special meaning.


>and the list started dropping
>ALL emails. Why?
>
>We're running SpamAssassin on another box (mail gets forwarded to the
>"mailman box" after SpamAssassin is done with it), and I've confirmed
>that SpamAssassin is running properly and not setting "X-Spam-Flag:
>Yes" across the board.
>
>Even with the forgot-to-backslash-hyphens error, why would that regexp
>match the headers of every message?
>
>We tested this and it's repeatable: with that regexp as a spam filter,
>emails are dropped-- when that regexp is removed, emails go through
>properly.


I don't know. There are cases of people using

^x-spam-status:.*yes

and having it match

X-Spam-Status: No ... tests=BAYES...

but X-Spam-Flag: should be just yes or no. In fact, I think by default
it is just

X-Spam-Flag: YES

or not present at all.

I haven't looked at this to see if it is actually a possible cause, but
the regexp box in header_filter_rules is a list of regexps one per
line. If it contains an empty line or a 'blank' line, that might be a
regexp that will match anything or any blank. Don't type a new-line
after the regexp.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan