How to: Test Spam Assassin’s Spam Score

The qmail-inject tool can be used to send messages back into the mail queue. This can be useful if there is an issue with spam, where messages that appear to be scored correctly are not being sent to the correct directory.

To Test SpamAssasin’s Scoring

  1. Log in to the server at the CLI as root, either via SSH or from the terminal

  2. At the CLI, navigate to the email user’s mail directory. It is found at /home/{unixuser}/var/{domain.com}/mail/{mailuser}/Maildir, replacing {unixuser}, {domain.com}, and {mailuser}, with the corresponding information

    cd /home/{unixuser}/var/{domain.com}/mail/{mailuser}/Maildir

  3. Navigate to the mail folder the message that will be used for testing resides. There are three possible mail folders:

    • New: Where new messages that have yet to be seen in the inbox are located

    • Cur: Messages in the inbox, which have been already been viewed or addressed

    • Tmp: Messages that have yet to be sent to the inbox

    • .Spam: Where messages marked as spam are sent

    Messages that can be used for testing will most likely be located in either cur, or new.

  4. Make a copy of the message that will be used for testing and move that copy to /tmp or /root as a backup

    cp 1645131655.M949881P22057V0000000000010301I0000000000518F00.server.com,S=2621 /tmp/1645131655.M949881P22057V0000000000010301I0000000000518F00.server.com,S=2621

  5. Using a text editor, open the original message. The following example uses the Vim text editor:

    vim 1645131655.M949881P22057V0000000000010301I0000000000518F00.server.com,S=2621

  6. Remove all X-Spam related headers. They are located at the top of the file. For example:

    X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on
  server.com
X-Spam-Level: *
X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.2 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID,
     DKIM_VALID_AU,RDNS_NONE,SPF_HELO_NONE,T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE,
     URIBL_BLOCKED autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2

  7. Save the file and exit the text editor

  8. Inject the message back into the mail queue using the qmail-inject tool. This will process and score the message again

    /var/qmail/bin/qmail-inject < 1645131655.M949881P22057V0000000000010301I0000000000518F00.server.com,S=2621