understanding bogofilter

[David Relson]

At 09:01 PM 5/5/03, Jon Reynolds wrote:

>I have been reading everything I can about bogofilter and how to set it
>up. I want to be able to use it at the server level and train it from
>there.
>
>1. I have virtual domains(VMailMgr+qmail+squirrelmail) and am wondering
>if one setup using spam and ham from all domains in one corpus would
>work for all domains or does there have to be a seperate corpus for each
>domain?

It can be done.  However since each user has his own definition of spam, a 
single wordlist probably won't work well.

>2. I use maildirs and I saw a program in the 'contrib' directory that
>makes a maildir into an mbox format. Will I need to do this?

No.  You can loop over files in a maildir and process them one at a 
time.  Bogofilter-0.12 has bulk mode switches ('-b' and '-B') which can be 
used to make maildir operations faster - assuming you can meaningfully 
process more than one file in a batch.

>3. After a message has been verified as spam will it still be processed
>and sent to the user marked as spam or is it simply discarded after it
>has been initially tagged as spam?

Not bogofilter's job.  Use procmail, maildrop, or other MDA.

>4. I want to setup an new mailbox called "spam" and have my users
>forward their spam to that address. Is it ok to forward mail or does it
>have to be bounced?

It's O.K., though forwarding will change the headers some.

>5. If I set it up for server level how do I deal with false positives?
>Would I simply create a "non-spam" address and any time a user gets a
>mail marked as spam which is not spam would they just need to forward
>that msg to the non-spam email account?

A non-spam account would work.

>6. And finally... If I do set it up for server level filtering will I
>have to check fo false positives for everyone personally or is it still
>sent to the user?

Again, that's the job of the MDA.  One idea is to deliver spam and let 
users filter it out (for which "X-Bogosity: Yes" works nicely).  Another 
idea is to quarantine spam and give users an opportunity to view From and 
Subject information.