I’m facing an issue with SpamAssassin where it doesn’t seem to apply any custom rules defined in the user_prefs file. I’ve added a few test rules to that file (such as matching specific keywords in the subject or body), but they are not being triggered when I run spamassassin.
Here’s what I’ve checked so far:
The user_prefs file exists under /home/account/home/emailuser/.spamassassin/
The file has appropriate read permissions
I’ve restarted SpamAssassin after making changes
Despite this, the custom rules are not being picked up. Has anyone else faced this issue? Is there something I might be missing in the configuration or startup options?
You need to update. We can’t help with a version that is many years old.
You can update Virtualmin relatively easily, at least for a little while longer, though our support for CentOS 7 also ended when that OS reached EOL, our packages and repos are still expected to work for now (but we make no promises, if something breaks specifically on an EOL OS we don’t put effort into fixing it):
You also urgently need to update your operating system, as CentOS 7 reached end of life a year ago. Rocky 9 or Alma 9 would be the appropriate place to go from CentOS 7. You have a few options for how to go about it. Starting with a new server and migrating is probably the cleanest/safest.
Another option is to upgrade in place. But, I don’t even know how you’d do that now that CentOS 7 and 8 are EOL. You’d have to upgrade first to CentOS 8 (not Stream, don’t upgrade to CentOS Stream, as they is unsupported and unlikely to ever be supported by Virtualmin), and then convert to Rocky or Alma using the tools available for doing that (e.g. Migrating To Rocky Linux - Documentation), but I don’t know if upgrading to CentOS 8 will work easily now that both 7 and 8 are EOL.
It’s best to get off of an operating system before it reaches EOL or soon after. CentOS is an especially rough situation because 8 was retired (it turned into Stream, but Stream is a different OS with quite different policies and practices that makes it incompatible with other EL systems) even before 7 reached EOL, leaving no clear path forward.
I’ve marked this solved, as your most urgent problem is running years out of date software, and it’s impossible to predict whether your original issue will remain once you’ve changed literally everything about your system by updating to a currently supported OS version. Once you’ve remedied that problem, if you still have problems with SpamAssassin, we’ll be happy to try to help.