1SPAMC(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation SPAMC(1)
2
6 spamc - client for spamd
7
9 spamc [options] < message
10
12 Spamc is the client half of the spamc/spamd pair. It should be used in
13 place of "spamassassin" in scripts to process mail. It will read the
14 mail from STDIN, and spool it to its connection to spamd, then read the
15 result back and print it to STDOUT. Spamc has extremely low overhead
16 in loading, so it should be much faster to load than the whole
17 spamassassin program.
18 See the README file in the spamd directory of the SpamAssassin
20 distribution for more details.
21
23 All options detailed below can be passed as command line arguments, or
24 be contained in a configuration file, as described in the CONFIGURATION
25 FILE section below.
26 Note that the long options, a la "--long-options", are new as of
28 SpamAssassin 3.2.0, and were not available in earlier versions.
29 -B, --bsmtp
31 Assume input is a single BSMTP-formatted message. In other words,
32 spamc will pull out everything between the DATA line and the lone-
33 dot line to feed to spamd, and will place the spamd output back in
34 the same envelope (thus, any SIZE extension in your BSMTP file will
35 cause many problems).
36 -c, --check
38 Just check if the message is spam or not. Set process exitcode to
39 1 if message is spam, 0 if not spam or processing failure occurs.
40 Will print score/threshold to stdout (as ints) or 0/0 if there was
41 an error. Combining -c and -E is a no-op, since -c implies the
42 behaviour of -E.
43 -d host[,host2], --dest=host[,host2]
45 In TCP/IP mode, connect to spamd server on given host (default:
46 localhost). Several hosts can be specified if separated by commas.
47 If host resolves to multiple addresses, then spamc will fail-over
49 to the other addresses, if the first one cannot be connected to.
50 It will first try all addresses of one host before it tries the
51 next one in the list. Note that this fail-over behaviour is
52 incompatible with -x; if that switch is used, fail-over will not
53 occur.
54 -4 Use IPv4 only for connecting to server. Restricts domain name
56 resolution of spamd server host(s) to address family AF_INET
57 through the "hints.ai_family" flag in the call to getaddrinfo(3).
58 -6 Use IPv6 only for connecting to server. Restricts domain name
60 resolution of spamd server host(s) to address family AF_INET6
61 through the "hints.ai_family" flag in the call to getaddrinfo(3).
62 -e command [args], --pipe-to command [args]
64 Instead of writing to stdout, pipe the output to command's standard
65 input. Note that there is a very slight chance mail will be lost
66 here, because if the fork-and-exec fails there's no place to put
67 the mail message.
68 Note that this must be the LAST command line option, as everything
70 after the -e is taken as arguments to the command (it's like rxvt
71 or xterm).
72 This option is not supported on Win32 platforms.
74 -E, --exitcode
76 Filter according to the other options, but set the process exitcode
77 to 1 if message is spam, 0 if not spam or processing failure
78 occurs.
79 -F /path/to/file, --config=path
81 Specify a configuration file to read additional command-line flags
82 from. See CONFIGURATION FILE below.
83 -h, --help
85 Print this help message and terminate without action.
86 -H, --randomize
88 For TCP/IP sockets, randomize the IP addresses returned for the
89 hosts given by the -d switch. This provides for a simple kind of
90 load balancing. It will try only three times though.
91 -l, --log-to-stderr
93 Send log messages to stderr, instead of to the syslog.
94 -L learn type, --learntype=type
96 Send message to spamd for learning. The "learn type" can be either
97 spam, ham or forget. The exitcode for spamc will be set to 5 if
98 the message was learned, or 6 if it was already learned, under a
99 condition that a --no-safe-fallback option is selected too.
100 Note that the "spamd" must run with the "--allow-tell" option for
102 this to work.
103 -C report type, --reporttype=type
105 Report or revoke a message to one of the configured collaborative
106 filtering databases. The "report type" can be either report or
107 revoke.
108 Note that the "spamd" must run with the "--allow-tell" option for
110 this to work.
111 -p port, --port=port
113 In TCP/IP mode, connect to spamd server listening on given port
114 (default: 783).
115 -r, --full-spam
117 Just output the SpamAssassin report text to stdout, if the message
118 is spam. If the message is ham (non-spam), nothing will be
119 printed. The first line of the output is the message score and the
120 threshold, in this format:
121 score/threshold
123 -R, --full
125 Just output the SpamAssassin report text to stdout, for all
126 messages. See -r for details of the output format used.
127 -s max_size, --max-size=max_size
129 Set the maximum message size which will be sent to spamd -- any
130 bigger than this threshold and the message will be returned
131 unprocessed (default: 500 KB). If spamc gets handed a message
132 bigger than this, it won't be passed to spamd. The maximum message
133 size is 256 MB.
134 The size is specified in bytes, as a positive integer greater than
136 0. For example, -s 500000.
137 --connect-retries=retries
139 Retry connecting to spamd retries times. The default is 3 times.
140 --retry-sleep=sleep
142 Sleep for sleep seconds between attempts to connect to spamd. The
143 default is 1 second.
144 --filter-retries=retries
146 Retry filtering retries times if the spamd process fails (usually
147 times out). This differs from --connect-retries in that it times
148 out the transaction after the TCP connection has been established
149 successfully. The default is 1 time (ie. one attempt and no
150 retries).
151 --filter-retry-sleep=sleep
153 Sleep for sleep seconds between failed spamd filtering attempts.
154 The default is 1 second.
155 -S, --ssl
157 If spamc was built with support for SSL, encrypt data to and from
158 the spamd process with SSL; spamd must support SSL as well.
159 --ssl-cert=certfile
161 Authenticate to spamd server with a SSL client certificate.
162 Specify the certificate file to use.
163 --ssl-key=keyfile
165 Authenticate to spamd server with a SSL client certificate.
166 Specify the certificate key file to use.
167 --ssl-ca-file=cafile
169 Use the specified Certificate Authority certificate to verify the
170 server certificate. The server certificate must be signed by this
171 certificate.
172 --ssl-ca-path=capath
174 Use the Certificate Authority certificate files in the specified
175 set of directories to verify the server certificate. The server
176 certificate must be signed by one of these Certificate Authorities.
177 See the man page for IO::Socket::SSL for additional details.
178 -t timeout, --timeout=timeout
180 Set the timeout for spamc-to-spamd communications (default: 600, 0
181 disables). If spamd takes longer than this many seconds to reply
182 to a message, spamc will abort the connection and treat this as a
183 failure to connect; in other words the message will be returned
184 unprocessed.
185 -n timeout, --connect-timeout=timeout
187 Set the timeout for spamc-to-spamd connection establishment
188 (default: 600, 0 disables). If spamc takes longer than this many
189 seconds to establish a connection to spamd, spamc will abort the
190 connection and treat this as a failure to connect; in other words
191 the message will be returned unprocessed.
192 -u username, --username=username
194 To have spamd use per-user-config files, run spamc as the user
195 whose config files spamd should load; by default the effective
196 user-ID is sent to spamd. If you're running spamc as some other
197 user, though, (eg. root, mail, nobody, cyrus, etc.) then you may
198 use this flag to override the default.
199 -U socketpath, --socket=path
201 Connect to "spamd" via UNIX domain socket socketpath instead of a
202 TCP/IP connection.
203 This option is not supported on Win32 platforms.
205 -V, --version
207 Report the version of this "spamc" client. If built with SSL
208 support, an additional line will be included noting this, like so:
209 SpamAssassin Client version 3.0.0-rc4
211 compiled with SSL support (OpenSSL 0.9.7d 17 Mar 2004)
212 -x, --no-safe-fallback
214 Disables the 'safe fallback' error-recovery method, which passes
215 through the unaltered message if an error occurs. Instead, exit
216 with an error code, and let the MTA queue up the mails for a retry
217 later. See also "EXIT CODES".
218 This also disables the TCP fail-over behaviour from -d.
220 -X, --unavailable-tempfail
222 When disabling 'safe fallback' with -x, this option will turn
223 EX_UNAVAILABLE errors into EX_TEMPFAIL. This may allow your MTA to
224 defer mails with a temporary SMTP error instead of bouncing them
225 with a permanent SMTP error. See also "EXIT CODES".
226 -y, --tests
228 Just output the names of the tests hit to stdout, on one line,
229 separated by commas.
230 -K Perform a keep-alive check of spamd, instead of a full message
232 check.
233 -z Use gzip compression to compress the mail message sent to "spamd".
235 This is useful for long-distance use of spamc over the internet.
236 Note that this relies on "zlib" being installed on the "spamc"
237 client side, and the "Compress::Zlib" perl module on the server
238 side; an error will be returned otherwise.
239 --headers
241 Perform a scan, but instead of allowing any part of the message
242 (header and body) to be rewritten, limit rewriting to only the
243 message headers. This is much more efficient in bandwidth usage,
244 since the response message transmitted back from the spamd server
245 will not include the body.
246 Note that this only makes sense if you are using "report_safe 0" in
248 the scanning configuration on the remote end; with "report_safe 1",
249 it is likely to result in corrupt messages.
250
252 The above command-line switches can also be loaded from a configuration
253 file.
254 The format of the file is similar to the SpamAssassin rules files;
256 blank lines and lines beginning with "#" are ignored. Any space-
257 separated words are considered additions to the command line, and are
258 prepended. Newlines are treated as equivalent to spaces. Existing
259 command line switches will override any settings in the configuration
260 file.
261 If the -F switch is specified, that file will be used. Otherwise,
263 "spamc" will attempt to load spamc.conf in "SYSCONFDIR" (default:
264 /etc/mail/spamassassin). If that file doesn't exist, and the -F switch
265 is not specified, no configuration file will be read.
266 Example:
268 # spamc global configuration file
270 # connect to "server.example.com", port 783
272 -d server.example.com
273 -p 783
274 # max message size for scanning = 350k
276 -s 350000
277
279 By default, spamc will use the 'safe fallback' error recovery method.
280 That means, it will always exit with an exit code of 0, even if an
281 error was encountered. If any error occurs, it will simply pass
282 through the unaltered message.
283 The -c and -E options modify this; instead, spamc will use an exit code
285 of 1 if the message is determined to be spam.
286 If one of the "-x", "-L" or "-C" options are specified, 'safe fallback'
288 will be disabled, and certain error conditions related to communication
289 between spamc and spamd will result in an error code.
290 The exit codes used are as follows:
292 EX_USAGE 64 command line usage error
294 EX_DATAERR 65 data format error
295 EX_NOINPUT 66 cannot open input
296 EX_NOUSER 67 addressee unknown
297 EX_NOHOST 68 host name unknown
298 EX_UNAVAILABLE 69 service unavailable
299 EX_SOFTWARE 70 internal software error
300 EX_OSERR 71 system error (e.g., can't fork)
301 EX_OSFILE 72 critical OS file missing
302 EX_CANTCREAT 73 can't create (user) output file
303 EX_IOERR 74 input/output error
304 EX_TEMPFAIL 75 temp failure; user is invited to retry
305 EX_PROTOCOL 76 remote error in protocol
306 EX_NOPERM 77 permission denied
307 EX_CONFIG 78 configuration error
308 * The EX_TOOBIG error level is never used. If spamc receives a message
310 that is too big, the exit code will be 0.
311 EX_TOOBIG 98 message was too big to process (see --max-size)
313
315 spamd(1) spamassassin(1) Mail::SpamAssassin(3)
316
318 "Mail::SpamAssassin"
319
321 The SpamAssassin(tm) Project <https://spamassassin.apache.org/>
322
324 SpamAssassin is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, as
325 described in the file "LICENSE" included with the distribution.
326perl v5.38.0 2023-07-22 SPAMC(1)