Evolution and spam filtering

[sktsee]

On Tue, 15 May 2007 01:12:07 -0300, J. Pablo" Fernández wrote:

> Once again I am trying Evolution and spam filtering just *doesn't* work
> out of the box.
> When I start Evolution from a terminal I see: (evolution-2.10:22153):
> evolution-mail-WARNING **: ignored this junk plugin: not enabled or we
> have already loaded one
> 
> (evolution-2.10:22153): e-utils-WARNING **: Plugin 'Bogofilter junk
> plugin' failed to load hook 'org.gnome.evolution.mail.junk:1.0'
> 
> 
This particular problem has been around at least since Dapper, which is
what I'm on. Basically, Evolution still loads the SpamAssassin plugin even
after it is disabled in the Evolution's plugin manager, and even if you
don't have SpamAssassin installed on your machine! Because it prevents the
Bogofilter plugin from loading, you get the error message above.

My solution to the problem was to prevent Evolution from loading the
SpamAssassin plugin. Working on the theory that a program can't load a
plugin it cant' find, I deleted the SpamAssassin plugins from Evolution's
plugin directory: (on Dapper Evolution is at 2.6, so you would change
your path to the appropriate version, which is 2.10)

$ sudo rm /usr/lib/evolution/2.6/plugins/*sa-junk*

That will take care of the error that you are getting above.

To be on the safe side, first make sure evolution isn't running. If you
are not comfortable deleting the files then just move them to another
directory.

The downside to this method occurs when there is an update to Evolution
pushed through by update-manager. The sa-junk plugin files will be
re-installed along with the other updated Evolution files. You may have to
remove the sa-junk files from the plugin directory again if Evolution
stops filtering spam after an update. Of course, you could get fancy and
read up on how to use dpkg-divert to rename the files so that the package
manager will honor the changes permanently through any updates.


> Does it need bogofilter? what filter does it use? how do I make it work?
> In Debian Etch it seems to work out of the box.

All the Evolution bogofilter plugin basically does is pipe the email
through the bogofilter application. You definitely need the bogofilter
package installed if you are going to use it to filter spam emails from
Evolution.

Once you get it installed, you'll need to train bogofilter to
differentiate between spam and non-spam emails. You can go here 
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=354040&highlight=bogofilter to
read about one method of how to train bogofilter.

HTH

-- 
sktsee