Re: Help with KAM rule set setup (RHEL10, SA 4.0)

On 2026-04-14 at 13:57:16 UTC-0400 (Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:57:16 -0500)
Scott Techlist <[email protected]>
is rumored to have said:

> Restarting a (new) thread from a few weeks back where I was trying to 
> get KAM working on an older box.  I couldn't get that to work and that 
> was the impetus to upgrade.

I don't understand how that could have broken, unless the problem was 
antique OpenSSH on that old box not supporting secure transfers from the 
very modern mcgrail.com servers.

> I started a fresh server build to get KAM implemented.
> -AlmaLinux release 10.1 (Heliotrope Lion)
> -amavis-2.13.1 (20240304)
> -SpamAssassin version 4.0.1
> -  running on Perl version 5.40.2
>
> This was not without some pain. I had to cpanm and build from source 
> some missing perl modules that are not included in any AL10 dnf 
> packages to get the base installs missing modules cleared.  After 
> that, I setup the KAM channel and ran into a problem:
>
> On AlmaLinux 10 (and presumably RHEL 10, Rocky 10, etc) the OVAL 
> plugin is no longer included in the SpamAssassin 4.0.x packages. I 
> presume due to Red Hat's deprecation of OVAL in favor of CSAF/VEX. 
> (https://access.redhat.com/security/oval-v2-deprecation-announcement)

OVAL.pm has *never* been part of the official SpamAssassin distribution 
and in fact this is the first time I've ever heard of it. I guess it 
never caught on...

NOTHING in SpamAssassin as distributed has any dependencies on or 
awareness of OVAL or RH's replacements for OVAL.

I have been using the KAM ruleset for many years, blissfully unaware of 
OVAL. That may be because the KAM rules channel also does not reference 
OVAL in any way that I can find. It also requires no special setup 
beyond the documented process of running "sa-update --channel 
kam.sa-channels.mcgrail.com --gpgkey 24C063D8" as root (or another user 
that can write to your config...) daily.

> AS a workaround to the KAM installation:
>
> 1. I had added to /etc/mail/spamassassin/v400.pre:
>
> loadplugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::OVAL 
> /etc/mail/spamassassin/OVAL.pm

How was that in any way related to the KAM ruleset?

Just remove it if you don't have the plugin.

> 2. In order to clear the error I made a stub ruleset OVAL.pm (thanks 
> to AI, hopefully it's OK):

Since you didn't put in the effort to write it, I'm not about to waste 
any effort on it either. I guarantee that it's useless, because NO ONE 
understands it.

[slop elided...]

> Is there anything better I can do to resolve?  Will what I did break 
> something or cause the KAM scores to be bad for the OVAL dependent 
> rules?

What is the *actual* *problem* that you are trying to resolve?

Note that neither the KAM rules channel nor any proprietary plugin from 
a distro vendor is an ASF-supported part of SpamAssassin. However, we do 
support 3rd-party plugins and rules channels, so if you're having a 
*clearly* *defined* *problem* with integrating either, we'd eagerly 
help.

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