Bug 260201

Created attachment 176541 [details]
Detaqiled description of problem and selected configuration files

I can confirm this. It is also not writing into /etc/mail/spamassassin I get 
many of these in my maillog:

maillog:Aug 28 05:28:09 compsci spamd[3222]: bayes: cannot write to
/etc/mail/spamassassin/bayes_journal, bayes db update ignored: Permission denied

I am checking for spam via spamd daemon.

PS: Not running selinux don't see the audit messages but see the maillog
    messages. Should spamd run as nobofy with "-u nobody" option?

My local.cf includes:

report_safe 0
rewrite_header Subject [SPAM]

use_bayes               1
# Note this is a basename, not a path
bayes_path              /etc/mail/spamassassin/bayes
bayes_file_mode         0777

# Enable Bayes auto-learning
bayes_auto_learn              1

score BAYES_90 0 0 4.2 4.2
score BAYES_99 0 0 5 5

Did this behavior begin recently with a particular selinux update?

Harold, could you please supply these files:

/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
/etc/sysconfig/spamassassin

Warren,

I did not notice when this behavior started.  I was trying to configure mailman
to use spamassassin and that is when I noticed the failures...

/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf

     # These values can be overridden by editing ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs.cf 
     # (see spamassassin(1) for details)

     # These should be safe assumptions and allow for simple visual sifting
     # without risking lost emails.

     required_hits 5
     report_safe 1
     rewrite_header Subject [SPAM]

/etc/sysconfig/spamassassin

     SPAMDOPTIONS="-d -x -m5 -P -u spamassassin"

Where did the "-u spamassassin" come from. I don't have that for some
reason. I don't have user spamassassin either. This may solve the
problem with bayes_journal ... run it as special user. Any suggestions?
Thanks

Harold, you are using a non-standard configuration of spamassassin.  Why did you
use the -u option?  The standard spamd options should be secure enough because
it drops privs and is further protected by selinux.

The -u spamassassin came from a procedure to use spamassassin with mailman which
I found here:  http://www.jamesh.id.au/articles/mailman-spamassassin/

The spamassassin id was created with the command:
useradd -r -d /var/lib/spamassassin -M -s /sbin/nologin \
        -c 'SpamAssassin' spamassassin

I realize now that the -u parameter is probably not needed.  I tried it both
ways, and I get the same errors trying to write to /var/lib/spamassassin...

It may be needed. I am not using selinux and can't write as shown above. The
discussions I saw all recommended have a user other than root nad writing
to a directory other than /root, which is ok on our case.

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