All options detailed below can be passed as command line arguments, or be contained in a configuration
file, as described in the CONFIGURATIONFILE section below.
Note that the long options, a la "--long-options", are new as of SpamAssassin 3.2.0, and were not
available in earlier versions.
-B, --bsmtp
Assume input is a single BSMTP-formatted message. In other words, spamc will pull out everything
between the DATA line and the lone-dot line to feed to spamd, and will place the spamd output back in
the same envelope (thus, any SIZE extension in your BSMTP file will cause many problems).
-c, --check
Just check if the message is spam or not. Set process exitcode to 1 if message is spam, 0 if not
spam or processing failure occurs. Will print score/threshold to stdout (as ints) or 0/0 if there
was an error. Combining -c and -E is a no-op, since -c implies the behaviour of -E.
-dhost[,host2], --dest=host[,host2]
In TCP/IP mode, connect to spamd server on given host (default: localhost). Several hosts can be
specified if separated by commas.
If host resolves to multiple addresses, then spamc will fail-over to the other addresses, if the
first one cannot be connected to. It will first try all addresses of one host before it tries the
next one in the list. Note that this fail-over behaviour is incompatible with -x; if that switch is
used, fail-over will not occur.
-4 Use IPv4 only for connecting to server. Restricts domain name resolution of spamd server host(s) to
address family AF_INET through the "hints.ai_family" flag in the call to getaddrinfo(3).
-6 Use IPv6 only for connecting to server. Restricts domain name resolution of spamd server host(s) to
address family AF_INET6 through the "hints.ai_family" flag in the call to getaddrinfo(3).
-ecommand[args], --pipe-tocommand[args]
Instead of writing to stdout, pipe the output to command's standard input. Note that there is a very
slight chance mail will be lost here, because if the fork-and-exec fails there's no place to put the
mail message.
Note that this must be the LAST command line option, as everything after the -e is taken as arguments
to the command (it's like rxvt or xterm).
This option is not supported on Win32 platforms.
-E, --exitcode
Filter according to the other options, but set the process exitcode to 1 if message is spam, 0 if not
spam or processing failure occurs.
-F/path/to/file, --config=path
Specify a configuration file to read additional command-line flags from. See CONFIGURATIONFILE
below.
-h, --help
Print this help message and terminate without action.
-H, --randomize
For TCP/IP sockets, randomize the IP addresses returned for the hosts given by the -d switch. This
provides for a simple kind of load balancing. It will try only three times though.
-l, --log-to-stderr
Send log messages to stderr, instead of to the syslog.
-Llearntype, --learntype=type
Send message to spamd for learning. The "learn type" can be either spam, ham or forget. The
exitcode for spamc will be set to 0 if the message was learned or if it had already been learned.
Non-zero exitcodes indicate an actual failure of some sort.
Note that the "spamd" must run with the "--allow-tell" option for this to work.
-Creporttype, --reporttype=type
Report or revoke a message to one of the configured collaborative filtering databases. The "report
type" can be either report or revoke.
Note that the "spamd" must run with the "--allow-tell" option for this to work.
-pport, --port=port
In TCP/IP mode, connect to spamd server listening on given port (default: 783).
-r, --full-spam
Just output the SpamAssassin report text to stdout, if the message is spam. If the message is ham
(non-spam), nothing will be printed. The first line of the output is the message score and the
threshold, in this format:
score/threshold
-R, --full
Just output the SpamAssassin report text to stdout, for all messages. See -r for details of the
output format used.
-smax_size, --max-size=max_size
Set the maximum message size which will be sent to spamd -- any bigger than this threshold and the
message will be returned unprocessed (default: 500 KB). If spamc gets handed a message bigger than
this, it won't be passed to spamd. The maximum message size is 256 MB.
The size is specified in bytes, as a positive integer greater than 0. For example, -s500000.
--connect-retries=retries
Retry connecting to spamd retries times. The default is 3 times.
--retry-sleep=sleep
Sleep for sleep seconds between attempts to connect to spamd. The default is 1 second.
--filter-retries=retries
Retry filtering retries times if the spamd process fails (usually times out). This differs from
--connect-retries in that it times out the transaction after the TCP connection has been established
successfully. The default is 1 time (ie. one attempt and no retries).
--filter-retry-sleep=sleep
Sleep for sleep seconds between failed spamd filtering attempts. The default is 1 second.
-S, --ssl
If spamc was built with support for SSL, encrypt data to and from the spamd process with SSL; spamd
must support SSL as well.
--ssl-cert=certfile
Authenticate to spamd server with a SSL client certificate. Specify the certificate file to use.
--ssl-key=keyfile
Authenticate to spamd server with a SSL client certificate. Specify the certificate key file to use.
--ssl-ca-file=cafile
Use the specified Certificate Authority certificate to verify the server certificate. The server
certificate must be signed by this certificate.
--ssl-ca-path=capath
Use the Certificate Authority certificate files in the specified set of directories to verify the
server certificate. The server certificate must be signed by one of these Certificate Authorities.
See the man page for IO::Socket::SSL for additional details.
-ttimeout, --timeout=timeout
Set the timeout for spamc-to-spamd communications (default: 600, 0 disables). If spamd takes longer
than this many seconds to reply to a message, spamc will abort the connection and treat this as a
failure to connect; in other words the message will be returned unprocessed.
-ntimeout, --connect-timeout=timeout
Set the timeout for spamc-to-spamd connection establishment (default: 600, 0 disables). If spamc
takes longer than this many seconds to establish a connection to spamd, spamc will abort the
connection and treat this as a failure to connect; in other words the message will be returned
unprocessed.
-uusername, --username=username
To have spamd use per-user-config files, run spamc as the user whose config files spamd should load;
by default the effective user-ID is sent to spamd. If you're running spamc as some other user,
though, (eg. root, mail, nobody, cyrus, etc.) then you may use this flag to override the default.
-Usocketpath, --socket=path
Connect to "spamd" via UNIX domain socket socketpath instead of a TCP/IP connection.
This option is not supported on Win32 platforms.
-V, --version
Report the version of this "spamc" client. If built with SSL support, an additional line will be
included noting this, like so:
SpamAssassin Client version 3.0.0-rc4
compiled with SSL support (OpenSSL 0.9.7d 17 Mar 2004)
-x, --no-safe-fallback
Disables the 'safe fallback' error-recovery method, which passes through the unaltered message if an
error occurs. Instead, exit with an error code, and let the MTA queue up the mails for a retry
later. See also "EXIT CODES".
This also disables the TCP fail-over behaviour from -d.
-X, --unavailable-tempfail
When disabling 'safe fallback' with -x, this option will turn EX_UNAVAILABLE errors into EX_TEMPFAIL.
This may allow your MTA to defer mails with a temporary SMTP error instead of bouncing them with a
permanent SMTP error. See also "EXIT CODES".
-y, --tests
Just output the names of the tests hit to stdout, on one line, separated by commas.
-K Perform a keep-alive check of spamd, instead of a full message check.
-z Use gzip compression to compress the mail message sent to "spamd". This is useful for long-distance
use of spamc over the internet. Note that this relies on "zlib" being installed on the "spamc" client
side, and the "Compress::Zlib" perl module on the server side; an error will be returned otherwise.
--headers
Perform a scan, but instead of allowing any part of the message (header and body) to be rewritten,
limit rewriting to only the message headers. This is much more efficient in bandwidth usage, since
the response message transmitted back from the spamd server will not include the body.
Note that this only makes sense if you are using "report_safe 0" in the scanning configuration on the
remote end; with "report_safe 1", it is likely to result in corrupt messages.
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