Re: .../updates_spamassassin_org/50_scores.cf is ignored

On 2025-06-10 at 12:21:38 UTC-0400 (Tue, 10 Jun 2025 18:21:38 +0200)
Vincent Lefevre <[email protected]>
is rumored to have said:

> The file
> /var/lib/spamassassin/4.000001/updates_spamassassin_org/50_scores.cf
> is ignored on my Debian/stable server.

Are you 100% certain of that?

Running 'spamassassin --lint -D config' will give you a rundown of the 
config files as they get loaded. Somewhere in the middle of the output 
should be 4 lines like this:

   dbg: config: fixed relative path: 
/var/lib/spamassassin/4.000001/updates_spamassassin_org/50_scores.cf
   dbg: config: using 
"/var/lib/spamassassin/4.000001/updates_spamassassin_org/50_scores.cf" 
for included file
   dbg: config: read file 
/var/lib/spamassassin/4.000001/updates_spamassassin_org/50_scores.cf
   dbg: config: parsing file 
/var/lib/spamassassin/4.000001/updates_spamassassin_org/50_scores.cf

If they are there, that file IS loaded and parsed by SA. If they're not 
present, there should be clues in whatever SA does emit.

> Why?

You likely need to ask the package maintainer for Debian. They have 
historically made significant changes.

That file is NOT ignored by the ASF-distributed version of SA if 
$LOCALSTATEDIR is defined as /var/lib/spamassassin/ at build time for 
both the Mail::SpamAssassin* Perl modules and sa-update.

> What part of the config is expected to load this file?

Files in $LOCALSTATEDIR/$VERSION/$CHANNEL/ directories are loaded in 
lexical order.

This is not configurable at run time. You also should NOT edit any files 
under $LOCALSTATEDIR. It is wiped and repopulated by sa-update, which 
should be run daily.

> AFAIK, the only files under /etc/spamassassin I have changed are
> local.cf and v310.pre (the other changes are due to the various
> upgrades since 2017).

Those changes would not affect where SA looks for the 
updates_spamassassin_org rules channel.



-- 
  Bill Cole
  [email protected] or [email protected]
  (AKA @[email protected] and many *@billmail.scconsult.com 
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