bogofilter.bogofilter [was: Bug#293207: bogofilter: Any fix found?]

[David Relson]

On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 16:24:28 -0600
Karl Schmidt wrote:

> As the originator of this bug report, I want people on this list understand the 
> status of the bug (it is closed) and the nature of the problem may be a bit 
> confusing looking at the log at Debian.
> 
> In the beginning (before the transaction logging), the db files were created the 
> first time bogofilter was run with that users ownership and umask. If those 
> permissions were lose enough everything worked no matter who used them.
> 
> Now - add the new setup that creates log files - the log files get the 
>  >>CURRENT<< users creation mask and ownership. Now when some other user tries 
> to run bogofilter the permission miss match from the log files return a not very 
> useful error from Bdb about db corruption, as it can't read the necessary log file.
> 
> Bdb isn't interested in checking ownership. The Bogofilter authors don't think 
> it is important (if the user is always the same it works) and it isn't precisely 
> their bug. So instead of doing some kind of ownership test that would return a 
> useful error, this permission problem will be rediscovered and talked about on 
> this list for the foreseeable future.
> 
> One way to fix this problem would be to have the package installation set up a 
> bogofilter user who would allow anyone belonging to the bogofilter group run 
> bogofilter and the bogofilter user would actually call Bdb and that would  cause 
> all files to have a bogofilter.bogofilter ownership and no one would get any 
> error other than one complaining that the user doesn't belong to the bogofilter 
> group and no db corruption would occur.

Hi Karl,

Thank you for taking the time to explain the problem and offer a
solution.  You've made it all quite clear and I appreciate that :-)

Bogofilter is a program with at least 3 different usage scenarios.  For
a single user, it can be run from the MUA and uses $HOME/.bogofilter/ as
the default directory for the wordlist.  On a mail server, each user
can have their own wordlist in $HOME/.bogofilter/ or there can be a
shared wordlist in a common directory.  For an ISP, there will be a
shared wordlist with restricted update privileges.  There is no "one
size fits all" installation.

The bogofilter.bogofilter idea is an interesting one.  For it to be
done during installation requires changing "make install" or changing
package options (which are distribution dependent).  'Tis likely that
making the bogofilter.bogofilter would please some people and annoy
others.  I don't see a good solution here :-<

The best solution I can see is to documentation the set-up choices and
what to do what a problem is encountered.  The FAQ seems like the
proper place.

Regards,

David
_______________________________________________
Bogofilter mailing list
Bogofilter at bogofilter.org
http://www.bogofilter.org/mailman/listinfo/bogofilter