Customizing spamassassin scores

[PWSowner]

I set up spamassassin about a month ago to try it out. I have the score set to 10 which seems to be pretty good, but I have seen a few things that I would like to modify the scores of a little.

With some studying and server inspection, I have come to this conclusion:

It's points system and other variables seem to be in the files at:
/home/.cpan/build/Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63/rules
It appears that I can change anything in those files by just copying the lines I want to alter to the file at:
/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
and changing the variables.

Do I know what I'm doing, or do I need a teacher?

Also, since the directory is Mail-SpamAssassin-2.63, does that mean I have V 2.63 of spamassassin? If so, how do I update it?

Thanks for any help.

[PWSowner]

No replies. Does that mean it's safe to assume I am correct?

The biggest score identifier I need to alter is the "Bayesian spam probability is 99 to 100%" one. I don't know how it decides that, but it has been wrong several times.

Do I just add this line to my /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf file to kill it?

score BAYES_99 0 0 0 0

In the last month I've had around 15 emails marked as spam that aren't, and in EVERY case, it was given a score of 5.4 due to the current scoring of
score BAYES_99 0 0 5.400 5.400
with all other scores totalling less than 5 and my setting at 10.

With this rule, it's not safe for me to automatically delete spam.

[PWSowner]

I figured it out myself.

The changes to the file did the job, and for them to take effect, spamd has to be restarted. Restarting exim in WHM doesn't do the job. I had to use shell and issue
/etc/rc.d/init.d/exim restart
which did the trick.

[ljprevo]

Sorry to chim in late here, I found this tool which is VERY helpful.

http://www.yrex.com/spam/spamconfig.php

"This tool is designed to make it easier to customize an installation of SpamAssassin with some common options. After you answer the questions below, a SpamAssassin configuration file matching your choices will be displayed, and you can download it and use it with your SpamAssassin installation. "

[PWSowner]

Thanks. Better late than never.

I was looking for these 2,

# Enable the Bayes system
use_bayes 0

# Enable Bayes auto-learning
auto_learn 0

because I've been getting a lot of falsely tagged email just because of Bayes scores.

[PWSowner]

That means you want to see this page.

http://spamassassin.rediris.es/tests.html

[PWSowner]

I don't think it's fully up to date, but it's got a lot of them.

To keep up to date would require adding new stuff at least weekly because there's always new spam coming out. Like today, I just started getting some new spam and got over 20 of the same thing in the last few hours.

[PWSowner]

It works great with proper tweaks. Haven't tried boxtrapper yet.