Hrm.  I can't reproduce this, and no one else has reported it.  Line 144 is:

    local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { $timedout++; die "__alarm__ignore__\n" };

%SIG is perl internal (defined), and $timedout is defined a few lines above, so
I don't see how anything can be uninitialized.

Since there's been nothing new since August, I'm closing as WFM.  If this is
still an issue, please provide more information (such as platform, perl version,
etc,) and details about when this issue occurs, if only on certain messages, etc.

Thanks.

We have the same warnings (a lot of) in our logs:
spamd[78842]: Use of uninitialized value in hash element 
at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Mail/SpamAssassin/Timeout.pm line 144.

FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE
Perl 5.8.8 (as one can see above).

Can you suggest any additional debug measures to elaborate the reason of this 
issue? We'll try to do the best.

(In reply to comment #2)
> Can you suggest any additional debug measures to elaborate the reason of this 
> issue? We'll try to do the best.

you could try adding lines like

  warn "DEBUG $timedout";

before and after the function runs; they'll be logged too.  but to be honest, I
think it's harmless...

(In reply to comment #3)
> you could try adding lines like
>   warn "DEBUG $timedout";
> before and after the function runs; they'll be logged too.  but to be 
honest, I
> think it's harmless...

  Warnings in logs are about "hash element", is $timedout a hash element?

I get quite a few of these too, looks to be constantly between 8 and 9% of processed messages.

# grep 'Timeout.pm line 144' /var/log/mail | wc -l
4408
# grep 'processing message' /var/log/mail | wc -l
49711

# grep 'Timeout.pm line 144' /var/log/mail.1 | wc -l
10982
# grep 'processing message' /var/log/mail.1 | wc -l
127307

# grep 'Timeout.pm line 144' /var/log/mail.2 | wc -l
12667
# grep 'processing message' /var/log/mail.2 | wc -l
142493

4 spamassassin -V 
SpamAssassin version 3.2.4
  running on Perl version 5.8.8

Arch Linux 2.6.23


I'm also having problems with all spamd children getting hung up every few days or so - not sure if it's related to this message or not.  Andrew, do you have any symptoms along with this warning?