[Maia-users] Maia Mail Scoring

[Robert LeBlanc]

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craig carriere wrote:

> Any known issues with MM loading some third party rules?

Yes, there's still an issue with malformed rule files that lack
"describe" lines for some of their rules.  The SpamAssassin standard is
to include a "describe" line in addition to the rule specification (the
score is actually optional, and will default to 1.000 if not specified).
 SpamAssassin itself is lenient when it comes to "describe" lines, but
without them they can't provide any text descriptions to go along with
the rule in the spam report (whether Maia's or SpamAssassin's).

The load-sa-rules.pl script won't load any rules that lack a "describe"
line (an issue explained in Ticket #357
<http://www.maiamailguard.com/maia/ticket/357>).  The trouble is that
there are some valid reasons for not including a describe line, namely
for "sub-rules" that the designer doesn't intend to advertise.  They get
used by "meta-rules" on a conditional basis (e.g. the meta-rule will
only fire if sub-rule X and sub-rule Y fire, and sub-rule Z does not
fire, etc.).  The only "safe" assumption is that if the rule designer
left out a "describe" line for a rule, then that rule is a sub-rule not
meant to be advertised.

In practice, though, a lot of third-party rule developers are just lazy
and can't be bothered to document their rules with a "describe" line (in
much the same way many programmers are too lazy to properly document
their code).  If you know which *.cf files contain the rules that Maia
is missing, you can always add your own "describe" lines to those files,
to clarify what the rule designer forgot.  The format is
straightforward--if you see a rule like:

  header FOO_BAR    X-Foo =~ /bar/
  score FOO_BAR     1.0

Just add something like:

  describe FOO_BAR  X-Foo header contains the string 'bar'

The string "X-Foo header contains the string 'bar'" will then be used by
SpamAssassin (and Maia) as the text description for rule FOO_BAR.  Run
the load-sa-rules.pl script again when you're done with your edits, to
make sure the new rules get loaded.

- --
Robert LeBlanc <rjl at renaissoft.com>
Renaissoft, Inc.
Maia Mailguard <http://www.maiamailguard.com/>

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