I got one server that as far as I know has the same config as others, where sa-update (spamassassin) does not seems to work with the cron. I see it is in /etc/cron.daily/spamassassin (user root, active yes).
But when I check the dir: /var/lib/spamassassin/3.004006/updates_spamassassin_org/ the update date is stuck. While other servers, I see the date of this folder change every day.
I expected to see an error in the cron mail if something was wrong, but there is no error email. Also when running it from command line, sa-update works fine.
Where should I look to find the possible cause of this?
Update: Strange, found the problem. Somehow the dir and it files: /var/lib/spamassassin/3.004006/ had root as owned, instead of debian-spamd. Did a chown and now it works. Crazy Maybe it helps someone running into this some day.
Update2: I checked again, but latest update was 3 days ago. Stopped working again or the fix was never the solution.
You misunderstand the problem and solution, I think. The files should have always been owned by debian-spamd, because it would be a stupidly dangerous idea to run every process, particularly ones that interact with data from the internet, like sa-update, as root.
Ok I have to give a little update: is does not work again. Now I’m even more confused
Let’s see how to fix this.
But Joe you say:
because it would be a stupidly dangerous idea to run every process, particularly ones that interact with data from the internet, like sa-update , as root .
But the daily cron that is created on installation, for Spamassassin is assigned to the root user?
Ok I found the real reason. When I look at the /etc/cron.daily/spamassassin script I see:
CRON=0
test -f /etc/default/spamassassin && . /etc/default/spamassassin
test -x /usr/bin/sa-update || exit 0
test -x /etc/init.d/spamassassin || exit 0
command -v gpg > /dev/null || exit 0
if [ "$CRON" = "0" ] ; then
exit 0
fi
And the CRON = 1 value is the result from this line: test -f /etc/default/spamassassin && . /etc/default/spamassassin
Now I thought this was enabled by default, but looking at /etc/default/spamassassin it was off. I have no idea why, maybe I missed something during install? Anyway the content was:
It might be distro specific? If you enable SA I’d think this should get toggled at the same time?
That said, I’m on 11. I had to install 10, upgrade to 11, and then installed VM. That was close to a year and a half ago now. I suppose something in the scripts could have changed.
Maybe it helps someone running into this some day.
must be an explanation for it, but not sure it’s worth investing more time into it.
.