The one relevant thing you haven't shown us is: 1) which user you're running the debug test under.
2) which user spamd is running under on your production system when exim is using it. As jdow has said, the best way to see (2) is by running ps -ef | grep spamd from any user. If the two users aren't the same, that's your problem because the user running spamd in (2) can't access your extra rules files. You should also try running your debug tests after starting spamd in the same way that its started for exim and repeat your test using spamc in place of "spamassassin --debug": the list of rules hit on your test message will show whether this found your private rules or not. FWIW, I always test rules in a spamc/spamd setup on a development host rather than by using spamassassin directly. I've organised things so that the testing copy of spamd is started under the same user as it runs under on the live system (I use postfix, not exim), so any access problems will be the same on both systems. Martin
