Bug 3929 - Consider email aliases to find user for storing prefs and bayes data
Summary: Consider email aliases to find user for storing prefs and bayes data
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Spamassassin
Classification: Unclassified
Component: spamc/spamd (show other bugs)
Version: 3.0.1
Hardware: Other Linux
: P3 minor
Target Milestone: Undefined
Assignee: SpamAssassin Developer Mailing List
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 4482 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2004-10-26 17:44 UTC by Carsten Emde
Modified: 2005-07-16 04:22 UTC (History)
1 user (show)


Attachment Type Modified Status Actions Submitter/CLA Status
Proposed patch to spamd 3.0.1 patch None Carsten Emde [NoCLA]
Proposed patch to spamd 3.0.1 patch None Carsten Emde [NoCLA]
Show Obsolete (1) Add an attachment (proposed patch, testcase, etc.)

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Description Carsten Emde 2004-10-26 17:44:22 UTC 
Users often have a number of email aliases, mostly to cope with address typos,
but also to cover the various schemas people use to derive the email address
from the name of a person. The user John Doe may, for example, have the login jd
and the following aliases:

John.Doe: jd
JohnDoe: jd
Jon.Doe: jd
JonDoe: jd
J.Doe: jd
JDoe: jd
Doe: jd
Jonny: jd
Anon: jd

However, any of these email aliases will cause spamd to claim, e.g. 

  spamd[nnnnn]: handle_user: unable to find user 'John.Doe'!

making it impossible to store user_prefs and Bayes data in
/home/jd/.spamassassin (or whatever John Doe's home directory may be). I think
that virtual user tables can be used to cope with this situation, but this may
create a lot of extra configuration and maintenance work - especially in large
companies. And, why install a new database, if /etc/aliases is already available?

Okay, here is my humble suggestion: Before giving up on a name, let's try to
find it in the aliases data base. The diff in the attachment has been produced
against 3.0.1.

Could this be a helpful enhancement?

Carsten Emde
<ce@ceag.ch>
Comment 1 Carsten Emde 2004-10-26 17:46:41 UTC 
Created attachment 2490 [details]
Proposed patch to spamd 3.0.1
Comment 2 Carsten Emde 2004-10-31 08:53:56 UTC 
After several days of testing on a number of systems the patch still works
without any major problem. Fixed a minor problem in the logmsg issued when a
user was not found in the aliases database. Applied minor changes to avoid perl
warnings. Increased severity and priority :-).
Comment 3 Carsten Emde 2004-10-31 08:55:50 UTC 
Created attachment 2500 [details]
Proposed patch to spamd 3.0.1
Comment 4 Michael Parker 2005-03-30 20:15:33 UTC 
I'm -1 on adding this to the codebase.

The way spamd is designed it is up to the calling program, either spamd or
something else, to determine what the username of record should be and send that
in the User: header to spamd.

An alternate method might be some sort of plugin hook that could be added to
allow a plugin to step in and alter the passed in username.
Comment 5 Justin Mason 2005-04-09 18:02:02 UTC 
'an alternate method might be some sort of plugin hook that could be added to
allow a plugin to step in and alter the passed in username.'

yes, IMO, this is the correct way to implement this.  the hook would be called
by spamd when it receives the "User" header.
Comment 6 Bob Menschel 2005-07-06 21:25:55 UTC 
Triage: Closing as WONTFIX based on comments by Michael and Justin. Plugin
contribution would be welcome.
Comment 7 Michael Parker 2005-07-16 12:22:52 UTC 
*** Bug 4482 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***