new file --- GETTING.STARTED

[David Relson]

G'day,

As promised a while ago, I've written a "getting started" document. It's
aimed for the newbie who has found bogofilter, but isn't quit sure what
to do with it once he/she's gotten it installed.  The document is still
a draft.  Odds are I've forgotten some important info.   Please read and
respond with clarifications, corrections, additions, etc.

Thank you,

David

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			   GETTING STARTED

- Installing Bogofilter
- Preparing for use
  - Configuring bogofilter
  - Training bogofilter
- Setting up the mail transfer and delivery agents
- Use with mail user agent
- Ongoing training
- Tuning bogofilter
- Additional information

--- Installing Bogofilter ---

    Bogofilter can be installed from  source or from a binary package.
    Releases are made available on SourceForge.net.

    Source formats include tarballs (in .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 forms)
    and rpms (bogofilter-VER.src.rpm).  Once downloaded and untarred,
    build and install with the usual commands, i.e.  "configure",
    "make", and "make install".  To ensure that the newly built
    bogofilter is running properly on your hardware and operating
    system, use "make check" to run a series of tests.  

    For source rpms, use "rpm -bb bogofilter.spec" and "rpm -ivh
    bogofilter" (or comparable commands).

    Binary formats include builds for dynamically linked (shared)
    libaries, e.g. bogofilter-VER.i586.rpm, and a statically linked
    executable, e.g. bogofilter-static-VER.i586.rpm.

    See the INSTALL file for more info.

--- Preparing for use ---

    Once bogofilter has been installed, it needs to be configured and
    trained, i.e. given messages that you classify as spam and
    non-spam (also called "ham").

--- Configuring bogofilter ---

    Bogofilter's default configuration is conservative, i.e. only
    messages that score very high on the ham/spam scale are classified
    as spam.  This is done to minimize the number of false positives
    (non-spam messages which are classified as spam).

    If you need (or wish) to change bogofilter's configuration
    options, the file is named "bogofilter.cf" and bogofilter first
    checks for /etc/bogofilter.cf and then for
    ~/.bogofilter/bogofilter.cf.  The configuration options are
    described in file bogofilter.cf.example.

--- Training bogofilter ---

    Bogofilter uses a database for storing its tokens and their ham
    and spam counts.  The file is commonly called "the wordlist" and
    its standard location is ~/.bogofilter/wordlist.db.

    As distributed, bogofilter doesn't include a wordlist.  You, the
    user, need to tell bogofilter what you consider spam and what you
    consider ham.  This is bogofilter's training process and involves
    running bogofilter with appropriate flags and with messages you've
    determined are ham and spam.  As bogofilter can work with multiple
    mail formats, e.g. mailboxes, maildirs, MH directories, etc, the
    training commands will depend on your environment.

    Useful options for training include:

	  -s - register message(s) as spam.
	  -n - register message(s) as non-spam.
	  -M - use mailbox mode, i.e. classify multiple messages in an
               mbox formatted file.
	  -B file1, file2, ... - set bulk mode, i.e. process multiple
               messages (files or directories) named on the command
               line.

    These options are documented in the bogofilter man page.

--- Setting up the mail transfer and delivery agents ---

    Bogofilter works with many mail transfer agents (such as postfix,
    sendmail, and qmail) and many mail delivery agents (for example
    procmail and maildrop).  Each of these has its own configuration
    file and methods for invoking spam filters like bogofilter.  The
    documentation includes files "integrating-with-postfix" and
    "integrating-with-qmail".  Read them for ideas on how to setup
    bogofilter for your environment.

    The most common setup uses bogofilter's "-p" (passthrough) option
    which adds an "X-Bogosity:" line as the end of the message's mail
    header.  Typical examples of this line are:

     (for spam)
       X-Bogosity: Spam, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=1.000000,
version=0.92.8
       X-Bogosity: Spam, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.999765,
version=0.92.8

     (for non-spam)
       X-Bogosity: Ham, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.000000,
version=0.92.8
       X-Bogosity: Ham, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.000413,
version=0.92.8
       X-Bogosity: Ham, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.373476,
version=0.92.8

     (for "unsures")
       X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.500332,
version=0.92.8
       X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.463498,
version=0.92.8
       X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.640426,
version=0.92.8
       X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.824933,
version=0.92.8

    Alternatively, bogofilter's return codes can be used by procmail
    (or maildrop) rules to put spam in one mailbox and ham in another.

--- Use with mail user agent ---

    Bogofilter is compatible with all mail user agents.  MUA's with
    filtering abilities can check the headers for "X-Bogosity: Spam"
    and "X-Bogosity: Ham" and take the appropriate actions for spam and
    ham.

    Alternatively, if your MUA has sufficient scripting capabilities,
    the MUA can run bogofilter and take the appropriate action.

    As time goes by and bogofilter encounters messages that it can't
    classify with certaintly, there will be messages classified as
    "Unsure".  As these messages are in the "gray" area, meaning "not
    clearly ham and not clearly spam" it's useful to have your MUA
    filter these messages so you can use them to train bogofilter.

--- Ongoing training ---
    
    Bogofilter can only do a good job if it has accurate and
    comprehensive information in its wordlist.

    As time goes by and bogofilter classifies messages for you, it
    will encounter problems time because it doesn't have enough
    information to correctly classify each and every message.  It's
    important to check message classifications!

    "False negatives", i.e. spam classified as ham, are easy since
    they'll appear in your inbox and be noticed.  "False positives"
    are important to find because they're messages you want!  All
    messages in these groups should be used to train bogofilter.

    Filtering "Unsure" messsages into a separate folder (or mailbox),
    and separating them into spam and ham, gives a good set of
    messages for training (using bogofilter's "-s" and "-n" flags).

--- Tuning bogofilter ---

    Once you've use bogofilter for a while, you may wish to optimize
    its classification parameters.  The bogotune utility uses your
    wordlist and additional ham and spam messages to check a large
    variety of possible parameter values and find what'll work best
    for your environment.  For more info, read the bogotune man page
    and file bogofilter-tuning.HOWTO.html.

--- Additional information ---

    Bogofilter includes a number of files having more information.
    You'll find them in /usr/share/doc (or comparable location).  The
    following files are included:

    FAQs:

          English - bogofilter-faq.html
	  French  - bogofilter-faq-fr.html

    General:

	INSTALL
	NEWS
	README
	RELEASE.NOTES

    Man pages:

	bogofilter
	bogolexer
	bogoutil
	bogotune
	bogoupgrade
	(also distributed in html and xml formats)

    HOWTOS:

	bogofilter-tuning.HOWTO.html
	integrating-with-postfix
	integrating-with-qmail

    Operating specific README files:

	README.freebsd
	README.hp-ux
	README.RISC-OS