Updating bogofilter

[David Relson]

On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 22:06:56 -0500
Andrew wrote:

> I've been using bogofilter with evolution for a few months now.  I've
> set up a few filters, one of which I use to teach bogofilter about
> spam it doesn't pick up.  (Real slick, mind you. :)  That's version
> 0.15.5.2 and now 0.17 is out.  I'm thinking of upgrading but I had a
> few questions first:
> 
> Does the updated bogofilter feature updated spam definitions, i.e.
> will it be better at guessing my spam?
> Assuming yes to the last question, is there a way of keeping my own
> configuration files from 0.15, or should I start anew?
> 
> Sorry if this has been documented somewhere; I couldn't find it in the
> man page, online, or in the doc folder.
> 
> Thanks,
> Andrew

Hello Andrew,

Bogofilter doesn't have "spam definitions" as such.  It has its database
of ham and spam words from the messages you've used to train it.  

Bogofilter's changes since 0.15.5.2 have been of two types.  First,
there have been small, incremental improvements in how it parses
messages.  They don't have a whole lot of effect on how it scores
messages.  Second, a variety of old options that existed for
compatibility with previous versions have been removed.  Read files
RELEASE.NOTES-0.16 and RELEASE.NOTES-0.17 for the details.

There is one change that _may_ affect you.  Early versions of bogofilter
used separate databases, named spamlist.db and goodlist.db, for spam and
ham tokens.  More recently all tokens are kept in a single database,
named wordlist.db.  If you have two databases, you'll have to run
bogoupgrade to merge them.

HTH,

David