Bogofilter maintenance

[Chris Ditri]

Hi everyone,

I am sorry this is a long post, but I don't want people to think I didn't try 
everything first!

I am new to the list, but I have been messing with bogofilter for about a 
month now.  There are still some things I am not sure about.  Here is a 
biggie:

When I first started using bogofilter, it was with bogofilter-0.10.2.tar.gz.  
After messing around a little, and after it build a reasonable database, the 
thing was cranking!  Better thann 99% accurate, and most things that were 
"missed" were really labled "unsure".  I was using the default settings, and 
the 3rd suggestion in the man page for sendmail/procmail.

Then... I updated to bogofilter-0.10.3.1.tar.gz, and the performance took a 
serious dive.  It was maybe 60% accurate, letting all kinds of spam through.
I am not certain if I needed to run bogoupdate or not, but I tried.  It didn't 
work anything like the documentation suggested.

So.. I updated to 8.11.6 just recently, and the performance is even worse.  I 
tried bogoupdate again, and it still doesn't seem to work.  I think the 
documentation on that particular utility are in need of an update.  First, it 
says that it is called bogoupdate.pl, and it is not.  So when I first did a 
search in the source tree like this:  find . -name "*.pl" it didn't show!  
Doing a search for "bogo*" seemed pretty sill in that directory :0).  
Eventually, however, I found it.

	# bogoupgrade --help
	usage: /usr/local/bin/bogoupgrade [ -i <input text file> -o <output db file> 		
	[ -b <path to bogoutil>] ] [ -h ]

According to this, it wants a text file for input.  This implies that it does 
not want the goodlist.db/spamlist.db as input.

So... I figured it must want me to do a bogoutil -d *list.db  >dbtextfile, 
then
bogoupgrade  -b /usr/local/bin/bogoutil -i dbtextfile -o *list.db

But it tells me:

Cannot recognize signature [--- 60 20030407]

So that can't be it....

so I thought, I could do a: strings *list.db >dbtextfile ... but that didn't 
work either.

So, I decided I would try feeding it the db file, even thought it stated that 
it wants a text file.  This did not work either.

Is this utility depricated, or flat out broken?  What am I doing wrong?  Do I 
even need to do this at all on these upgrades.  If not, then why did my 
accuracy go down the tubes?  I am not even at 40% accrurate anymore!

I tried just leaving the db's be, and switching algorythms from the default 
robinson to the fisher.  This didn't help.  I switched it back to Robinson.  
Now, with 0.8.11.6 the default *is* fisher... so I'll leave that... but it 
isn't helping.


Help!

Thank you!

Chris