'cannot open bayes database' in /var/log/maillog - spamassassin problem

[spaceman]

fyi:

grep -i 'cannot open' /var/log/maillog

produced lots of entries like this:

Aug 3 13:29:56 saturn spamd[21826]: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /home/carealot/.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed:
Aug 3 13:29:56 saturn spamd[21826]: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /home/carealot/.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed:
Aug 3 13:31:46 saturn spamd[22469]: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /home/carealot/.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed:
Aug 3 13:31:46 saturn spamd[22469]: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /home/carealot/.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed:
Aug 3 13:31:47 saturn spamd[22469]: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /home/carealot/.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed: No such file or directory
Aug 3 13:31:47 saturn spamd[21826]: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /home/carealot/.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed:

Permissions on /home/carealot/.spamassassin appeared to be incorrect:

carealot.nobody when they should be carealot.carealot

Tried this:

chown -R carealot.carealot /home/carealot/.spamassassin

... but the errors still kept appearing in maillog.

So in cpanel I disabled spamassassin on this account, rm-rf /home/carealot/.spamassassin, renabled spamassassin on this account (which had the effect of recreating the .spamassassin dir) - and the errors have not stopped appeaing in maillog.

I got looking into this problem shortly after receiving a call from carealot pop account owner who reported that some emails didn't appear to be getting through - and this was shortly after I'd enabled spamassassin on the account. So it's possible but not definite that the spamassassin problem was causing email problems.

[spaceman]

another approach here:

http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?t=18586