your advice and answers to your questions.

[Bob George]

Wayne K9DI wrote:
> [...] I am planning on using it in conjunction with procmail to sort 
> spam from ham on my system. I use several accts on my machine to sort
> of pre-sort email from various hobbies/interests of mine. Currently
> I'm using procmail to sort out mails that come from lists I belong
> to.  I'm getting snowed under by spam so want to "tag and bag" the
> spam before it hit's my system.

OK, that's pretty straightforward and is how I'm using it. Here's what I do:

1. Incoming messages are processed for all users via procmail
(/etc/procmailrc). I subscribe to lists with varying identifies that are
all mapped to a single "mailings" user account on my system.

2. In procmail, I call a variety of virus and spam scanning tools,
including bogofilter. All of these tools simply insert headers (with
varying levels of coercion. After passing the messages through my
gauntlet, I either dump, store for bayes training or forward the message
on to the user using procmail (still /etc/procmailrc).

3. In the user's procmailrc (~/.procmailrc) I do any sorting or filing
into folders (I use IMAP).

Does that sound about right?

> [...] I've had the best luck learning how to work with various open 
> source apps by either following a step by step (baby steps that is) 
> doc that is geared towards someone who isn't a sysadmin level guru...
> 
> 
> 
If what I've described is similar, you just need tofind the right
step-by-step for each tool. In this case, get familiar with procmail and
make sure you can get it to massage messages as you like. Bogofilter
will let procmail know if a message is spam or not, so procmail has to
work properly first (or rather, you have to GET it to. :)

> or by having a friend walk me through the process either in IM, by 
> phone, or in IRC.  I just love the CLI, I'm just not as proficient 
> with it as I would like to be.

I can send you snippets of procmailrc etc. I use. Realize some of this
may be off-topic for bogofilter (i.e. procmail specifics). There are
other lists for the other tools you may use.

> Thank you very much for your reply, btw: the FAQ is almost as 
> difficult to understand as the man page, IMHO.

Consider the FAQ for a surgeon's scapel. The tool itself is simple. It's 
how you apply it that's tricky!

As Matthias mentioned: Play with bogofilter alone passing messages thru 
it and testing. Then tie it to procmail (or whatever you use).

Good luck,

- Bob