Newbie config problem

[David Relson]

On Sun, 27 Nov 2005 08:20:30 -0500
Jason Jablon wrote:

> Hello All,
>     I installed bogofilter version 0.13.7.2 via Fink on Mac OS X Tiger
> 10.4.3. I have tried using it via procmail with recipe from the man
> page as follows:
> 
> >:0fw
> >| bogofilter -u -e -p
> >
> >:0e
> > EXITCODE=$?
> >
> >:0:
> >* ^X-Bogosity: Yes, tests=bogofilter
> >$HOME/Mail/spam
> 
> This is what I get:
> 
> >bogofilter: bogofilter: No such file or directory
> >procmail: Program failure (127) of "bogofilter"
> >procmail: Rescue of unfiltered data succeeded
> >From jsnjabber at fastmail.fm  Sun Nov 27 07:37:47 2005
> >Subject: Testing Bogofilter
> >Folder: EXITCODE=127 
> 
> I am not shure what file bogofilter is looking for, but I have my
> .bogofilterrc and .bogofilter directory in the standard locations
> (~/user). Any tips would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jason Jablon

Hello Jason,

0.13.7.2 ??? That's very, very old.  According to my records it dates
back to July 2003.  The current version is 0.96.6 and is dated 12 Nov
2005.

I don't know the standard names and locations for bogofilter files on
Mac OS X.  Under Linux, FreeBSD, etc the standard name for the config
file is bogofilter.cf and bogofilter will look for it in
$HOME/.bogofilter/ and /etc/.  A config file is only needed for
specifying non-standard option values.  If bogofitler can't find a
config file, it will use its default values and will run perfectly well.

Odds are that bogofilter is complaining because no wordlist can be
found. Have you done any training, i.e. providing sample ham and spam
messages to bogofilter so that it build a wordlist for using when
classifying incoming messages?  Running a command "echo test |
bogofilter -xd -vv" will give some information as to what file
bogofilter is looking for (and failing to find).

Bogofilter's capabilities and documentation have both been
significantly enhanced since July 2003.  I strongly urge you to get the
current version and read its docs.  Current source files are available
from ftp://ftp.bogofilter.org/pub/outgoing/bogofilter or from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bogofilter.  Once you have unpacked the
tarball, running "./configure && make && make check && make install"
will build it, verify correct functioning on your machine, and install
it.

Regards from Ann Arbor,

David