Problem with spam filtering in Mozilla/CSWB

jordan_at_ccs4vms.com
Date: 06/27/05 

Date: 26 Jun 2005 20:44:13 -0700

I'm going to post this here first because I haven't found any reference
to this problem anywhere, so it may not be multiplatform; if nobody
here knows I'll post to bugzilla. This is a hobbyist system so its not
under support.

FWIW there is a sort of equivalent compaint concerning somewhat similar
symptoms under linux on bugzilla (#283372), but no response or
assignment yet. I added a comment to that one 'just in case', even
though its linux-based because of another message that mentioned that
the linux port also creates a new training.dat file every time you
train it (as VMS seems to do). I do have two email accounts under my
profile (both are POP3 service from ISPs) so perhaps there really is
some kind of bug when using more than one account within a profile.

PWS600au, 1GB, OpenVMS V7.3-1, full patched (at the start of the
problem)
PWS600au, 1GB, OpenVMS V7.3-2, Update V4 only so far (current)

I was running Mozilla 1.5 until early this year. Last October the spam
filtering training stopped working, but all previous training was still
in force (and everything else kept working). If I clicked the junk
button, or the junk marker on the inbox listing line, I'd get disk
activity but the message would not get marked as junk (or cleared), and
the training.dat file would not get updated.

The problem survived upgrades to Mozilla V1.7, and the current SWB
V1.7.8 (with preceding VMS upgrade to V7.3-2). I had five versions of
the 'training.dat' file in my profile root directory, last date created
or modified was 31-Oct-2004. Security on the files was same as the
others in the directory (WRED, WRED, RE, )and there were no version
limits. Current file version was 2481, and it was 4134/4140 blocks in
size.

I ran CSWB with SET WATCH/CLASS=ALL FILE, and had the following
results:

     A lookup for LIBBAYESFLT_TV.SO failed.
     TRAINING.DAT was accessed for read only, successfully

Everything else 'looked' successful. There is a LIBBAYESFLT.SO file
present in SYS$COMMON:[CSWB.COMPONENTS], and it is protected as (WRED,
WRED, RE, RE), but there is no _TV version of that file. The only
place I've seen "_TV" files in the past were those translated from VAX
to Alpha using VEST/DECMigrate... A google search turned up nothing on
this filename.

I tried renaming the training.dat file (no change, new file not created
but no error reported), creating a new empty training.dat file (caused
inbound spam to not be marked as expected, but still no change in
behavior; I can't mark a message as spam, and the training.dat file is
still at 0 blocks with no data input).

Right now my other Alpha is stuck at V7.1 for working on a customer
system that is similarly held back, so I can't set up a duplicate
configuration. I am going to try creating a new user account (and
profile) to see what happens, when I can (I have to create new POP
accounts at work or on one of the ISPs to have something to test
against, it'll take a bit)

Any thoughts? Anyone else had a similar problem? Perhaps a better way
to go about finding out what's wrong?

Thanks!