What must you configure as to tell one instance of SpamAssassin to only
do minimal checking of the message. Then moving that message to another
version of SpamAssassin where it gives the message a score ?
On 5/19/2026 12:17 AM, Dave Funk wrote:
Christopher,
running multiple instances of spamd/spamassassin is the easy part, if
they're on separate physical or virtual machines or on the same
machine in containers (Docker, Kuberneties, etc). If they're directly
on the same host then you need to be careful about their
configurations, make sure each one has its own config file, pid file,
rules files, working "HOME directory", Bayes db instance, etc.
In general spamassassin does not 'verify' messages, it just looks at
them and assigns a numerical score based on multiple "grading"
criteria. It is true that one of the criteria is if a message has a
DKIM/DMARK signature and the validity thereof but that is usually a
small part of the score.
Think of it like multiple teachers grading a student's term-paper.
The tricky part of scanning a message by more than one spamd is making
sure that your 'glue' architecture is giving each spamd instance a
pristine unaltered copy of the message, not one that has been 'marked
up' by preceding spamd instances.
I frequently run more than one spamd instance to test out new versions
of SA and test-drive trial rule sets.
I handle this by making the earlier instance(s) run in "silent" mode
(IE not add any classification or score headers) and only have the
last instance actually add the usual scoring headers and if needed
trigger a SMTP reject on high scoring spam.
The only way that I know the "opinions" of the earlier SA instances is
to look at their log entries, they don't show up in the messages.
Hope that helps.
Dave
On Mon, 18 May 2026, FalconChristopher wrote:
I want to get some understanding which I can run multiple `spamd` as
long as as the daemon is running by using the -host or -port flags.
Therefore if I'm running SpamAssassin on a remote server, then
running SpamAssassin on another remote server. I assume the emails
can pass though two layers of verification ?
Christopher
