DocumentationCampaignCampaign Classic v7 Documentation
v7
Applies to Campaign Classic v7 only
on-premise & hybrid
Applies to on-premise and hybrid deployments only

Configuring SpamAssassin configuring-spamassassin

Last update: Mon Jul 31 2023 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
NOTE
Some configurations can only be performed by Adobe for deployments hosted by Adobe. For example, to access the server and instance configuration files. To learn more about the different deployments, refer to the Hosting models section or to this page.

Overview overview

SpamAssassin is a piece of software designed to filter undesirable emails. In conjunction with this software, Adobe Campaign can assign a score to emails and determine whether a message is likely to be deemed undesirable before delivery is launched. To do this, SpamAssassin must be installed and configured on the application server(s) of Adobe Campaign and requires a certain number of additional Perl modules to operate.

The deployment and integration of SpamAssassin as described in this chapter are based on default software installation, as are filtering and scoring rules, which are those provided by SpamAssassin without any alterations or optimizations. Score attribution and message qualification are based exclusively on the configuration of SpamAssassin options and on filtering rules. Network administrators are responsible for adapting them to their company’s needs.

IMPORTANT
The qualification of emails as undesirable by SpamAssassin is based entirely on filtering and scoring rules.
These rules therefore have to be updated at least once a day in order for your SpamAssassin installation and its integration into Adobe Campaign to be fully functional and to guarantee the relevance of scores assigned to your deliveries before sending.
This update is the responsibility of the server administrator hosting SpamAssassin.

Using SpamAssassin in Adobe Campaign provides an indication on the possible behavior of mail servers which use SpamAssassin when they receive email sent by Adobe Campaign. However, it is possible that the mail servers of internet providers or online mail servers still consider the messages sent by Adobe Campaign as undesirable.

Deploying SpamAssassin and its modules in Perl requires Adobe Campaign application servers equipped with internet access via a HTTP connection (TCP/80 flow).

Installing on a Windows machine installing-on-a-windows-machine

To install and configure SpamAssassin on Windows to enable integration with Adobe Campaign, apply the following steps:

  1. Install SpamAssassin
  2. Integrate SpamAssassin into Adobe Campaign

Installing SpamAssassin installing-spamassassin

  1. Connect to the Software distribution portal using your user credentials. Learn more about Software distribution in this page.

  2. Download the Neolane Spam Assassin (Windows Installation) (2.0) file (neolane_spamassassin.2.0.zip).

  3. Copy this file onto the Adobe Campaign server then unzip it.

    note note
    NOTE
    You can choose to unzip the file wherever you want provided that the path is made up of any of the following regular expression characters: -_A-Za-z\xA0-\xFF0-9\.\%\@\=+\,\/\\\:.. The installation path must not include any whitespace characters.

  4. Go to the file in which you have unzipped the file then double click on the run_me.bat file to launch the installation script.

    If a Windows Shell appears and continues to be displayed for a few seconds, wait until the installation and the update have finished, then click Enter.

    If the Windows Shell does not appear or is not displayed before instantly disappearing, follow these steps, double-click the portableShell.bat file to display a Windows Shell and check that the Shell path corresponds to the folder in which the spamassassin.zip file has been unzipped. If this is not the case, access it using the cd command.

    Enter run_me.bat then click Enter to start the installation and update process. The operation returns one of the following values in order to indicate the result of the update.

    • 0: an update has been carried out.
    • 1: No new update available.
    • 2: no new update available.
    • 3: update failed during prior verification.
    • 4 or more: an error has occurred.

  5. To check that the SpamAssassin installation was successful, use the GTUBE test (Generic Test for Unsolicited Bulk Email) using the following procedure:

    1. Create a text file and save it under C:\TestSpamMail.txt.

    2. Insert the following content into the file:

      code language-none 
      Subject: Test Spam Mail (GTUBE)
Message-ID: <1010101@example.net>
Date: MM-DD-YY
From: Sender <sender@example.net>
To: Recipient <recipient@example.net>
Precedence: junk
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-UBE-TEST-EMAIL*C.34X

    3. Double-click on the portableShell.bat file to display a Windows Shell then launch the following command (or “<root>” designates the created folder when unzipping the spamassassin.zip file):

      code language-none 
       "<root>\perl\site\bin\spamassassin" "C:\TestSpamMail.txt"

      The content of this test email triggers a 1,000 point score by SpamAssassin. This means it has been detected as undesirable and that the installation was successful and is fully functional.

Integrating SpamAssassin into Adobe Campaign integrating-spamassassin-into-adobe-campaign

  1. Edit the [INSTALL]/conf/serverConf.xml file. All the parameters available in the serverConf.xml are listed in this section.

  2. Change the value of the spamCheck elements’ command attribute in the Web node. To do this, run the following command:

    code language-none 
    <spamCheck command='"<absolute path to the folder where you unzipped the zip file>\call_perl_with_args.bat" "<absolute path to nlserver>/spamcheck.pl"'/>
    note note
    NOTE
    All paths must be absolute.

    Stop and start the Adobe Campaign service.

  3. To check the integration of SpamAssassin in Adobe Campaign use a GTBUE test (Generic Test for Unsolicited Bulk Email):

    Double-click on the portableshell.bat file. This triggers the display of a Windows Shell. Then run the following command:

    code language-none 
    perl "[INSTALL]\bin\spamcheck.pl" "C:\TestSpamMail.txt"

    The content of this test email triggers 1,000 points assigned by SpamAssassin. This means it has been detected as undesirable and that integration in Adobe Campaign was successful and is fully functional.

  4. Update SpamAssassin filtering and scoring rules

    For an initial update of filtering and scoring rules, start portableShell.bat and run the following command:

    code language-none 
    sa-update --no-gpg

    To run an automatic update of filtering and scoring rules, use this same command in a scheduled system task:

    code language-none 
    sa-update --no-gpg

Installing on a Linux machine installing-on-a-linux-machine

Installation steps in Debian installation-steps-in-debian

  • If necessary, install Perl and SpamAssassin using the following command:

    code language-none 
    apt-get install spamassassin libxml-writer-perl

  • In the serverConf.xml file (available in /usr/local/[INSTALL]/nl6/conf/), change the spamCheck line as follows:

    code language-none 
    <spamCheck command="perl
/usr/local/[NSTALL]/nl6/bin/spamcheck.pl"/>

Installation steps in RHEL/CentOS installation-steps-in-rhel-centos

If necessary, install Perl and recover the packages using CPAN:

cpan Digest::SHA1
cpan HTML::Parser
cpan Net::DNS
cpan Mail::SPF
cpan XML::LibXML
cpan XML::Writer
cpan Mail::SpamAssassin

Updating filter rules updating-filter-rules

Filter rules can be updated automatically using the sa-update tool. Refer to the official SpamAssassin website https://spamassassin.apache.org/ for more information.

In Debian, updates take place automatically each day.

If this is not the case (for example when Debian is installed manually), create a script to automate rule updates.

!/bin/sh
test -x /usr/bin/sa-update || exit 0
/usr/sbin/sa-update && /etc/init.d/spamassassin update

Insert this script into crontab using the following command:

crontab-e

Performance optimization performance-optimization

To improve performances in Linux, edit the /etc/spamassassin/local.cf file and add the following line at the end of the file:

dns_available no
recommendation-more-help
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