Mint 18 64-bit with all updates applied. Update policy set to "don't break my computer"

I went through all of the help and all of the places I could find to change spam filter, which is using spamasassin, to route all spam to IMAP/blah/junk. This is where a client I used to use years ago sent everything and I've just kept up with the tradition so I can always find things when I have to use another machine or the Web interface. So ...

If I right click and apply filter spam things actually go to junk.

Some messages go to junk all on their own.

Other messages go to "spam" not the old "Spam" folder still existing on the server. This new "spam" folder appears in KMail but does NOT appear on the IMAP server even though KMail shows it in that tree. I checked this with a different machine and Thunderbird as well as the Web interface provided by the email host. This appears to be some kind of local temporary folder. It has been a few days now. The pattern I'm noticing is the messages going to "spam" tend to be for mail order insert-ethnicity-here brides and cheap ED meds. Oddly enough the lovely Coach handbag knockoff messages don't seem to make the cut. I "assume" this has to do with how the spam wizard configured spamassasin, but I don't see anything wrong.





Is there some script somewhere for spamassasin which has a hard coded local "spam" folder I need to change?

I can't see anything wrong with the rules either. Is this "spam" folder visible anywhere in the folder hierarchy?

einar wrote:I can't see anything wrong with the rules either. Is this "spam" folder visible anywhere in the folder hierarchy?

Only within KMail. Is not visible via the Web page for the IMAP server nor in Thunderbird on a different machine. It literally looks like Spamassasin is somehow configured to create a temporary/non-synched folder to route blacklisted or whatever content it knows to be bad not just suspects.

I wonder if you could test using bogofilter instead of Spamassassin to see if the same thing occurs, but I assume that would disrupt your current filters.

At this time I'm not sure if it's Spamassassin or the way KMail invokes it.

einar wrote:I wonder if you could test using bogofilter instead of Spamassassin to see if the same thing occurs, but I assume that would disrupt your current filters.

At this time I'm not sure if it's Spamassassin or the way KMail invokes it.

Well, since SpamAssassin didn't appear to be learning anything, I installed Bogo Filter this morning, cleaned everything out of both "spam" and Junk, then ran the wizard to set up new filters using Bogo. Will be out of the office most of the morning so we shall see where things get dumped.

einar wrote:I wonder if you could test using bogofilter instead of Spamassassin to see if the same thing occurs, but I assume that would disrupt your current filters.

At this time I'm not sure if it's Spamassassin or the way KMail invokes it.

Well, it is starting to appear this is a KMail specific bug. I installed Bogo Filter and used the wizard to configure. Then I noticed there was no way to actually delete the Spamassassin filter so I went through disabling it every place in KMail I could find.



This morning there were 15 entries in the "spam" folder which doesn't appear on the IMAP server and there were 22 in Junk which is the folder actually configured to hold spam.

I just applied the massive bundle of updates which came down from MINT today. Too early to tell if they fixed the "spam" folder bug, but, they introduced a new bug. You cannot navigate through your message list with the arrow keys anymore. This worked prior to applying updates.

Please open a separate thread about this problem so that we can see what can be done about it.

Now that the wizard bug has been fixed I'm going to dig into this problem more. Laptop does not currently have any spam filters created. It also does not see the "spam" folder. I need the mint forum to come back up, seems to have crashed for now so I can screen scrape a couple of instructions. Want to ensure only Bogo gets installed on this laptop then create a bogo only spam filter and see if the "spam" folder appears or not. If it appears it is a bug in the wizard or KMail where any spam filter causes this. If not, then it is a bug unique to spamassassin.

Test 1: On Laptop I installed bogofilter and created spam filter via wizard then rebooted.
No mystery "spam" folder.


Test 2: On desktop I uninstalled Kontact and KMail via the software manager then hand deleted the following files:



After that rebooted then installed Kontact and KMail via the software manager and rebooted again. Re-added Kontact to main menu then started it. Was walked through establishing an identity but when Kontact started it had 2 IMAP accounts configured. One, I presume to be the new one because it had no mail, just the directory tree, did not have the "spam" folder. The other did. I deleted the first IMAP account and renamed the second.

NOTE: The wizards are once again gone. Will add this info to thread about wizards as well.