Really, it's always the most obvious, easy thing that's wrong but takes the longest to figure out.

I use postfix and have multiple domains setup in mysql.. the beauty of this setup (as if I need to explain) is that my users are not local users but rather live happily in my database and I don't have to worry about all kinds of security issues. Not to mention adding new users and domains consists of inserting sql statements.. how's that for sexy?

Considering that my users are not local, you can see why I would want my spamassassin settings to live on per-user basis in the db. It's easy to set that up.. there's a nice helpful document here that explains it all including a sample table. Lovely!

Of course I was having problems getting this to work.. running spamd in debug mode.. and it's not even connecting to the db! Looking at mysql logs.. sure enough.. no connection attempt.. google search.. yes, looks like a lot of people are having the same problem but nobody has a solution.

Finally.. (what I should have done first).. "man spamd"

-q, -sql-config
Turn on SQL lookups even when per-user config files have been disabled with -x. this is useful for spamd hosts which don’t have user’s home directories but do want to load user preferences from an SQL database.

Ah.. there it is.. -q -x and works like a charm.

Trivia: how many people know that Jeremy added this spamassassin feature? Small world, huh?