I hunted up a better script for running SpamAssassin from postfix and tweaked it for more logging and better errors and I'm still seeing some odd behavior.
e.g. from the system log: Nov 17 23:33:14 g3po spamchk[87681]: Spam filter piping to SpamAssassin: /usr/local/bin/spamc -x -E -s 10485760 Nov 17 23:33:14 g3po spamchk[87683]: SpamAssassin marked message as spam; diverting. Nov 17 23:33:14 g3po spamchk[87686]: SpamAssassin marked message as spam; diverting. Nov 17 23:33:15 g3po spamchk[87691]: SpamAssassin marked message as spam; diverting. Nov 17 23:33:15 g3po spamchk[87694]: SpamAssassin marked message as spam; diverting. Nov 17 23:33:28 g3po postfix/qmgr[87590]: warning: connect to transport spamchk: Connection refused Nov 17 23:42:28 g3po postfix/qmgr[137]: warning: connect to transport spamchk: Connection refused Nov 17 23:47:27 g3po postfix/qmgr[137]: warning: connect to transport spamchk: Connection refused Nov 17 23:52:28 g3po postfix/qmgr[137]: warning: connect to transport spamchk: Connection refused Nov 17 23:52:29 g3po spamchk[419]: Spam filter piping to SpamAssassin: /usr/local/bin/spamc -x -E -s 10485760 Nov 17 23:52:31 g3po spamchk[422]: SpamAssassin marked message as spam; diverting. Any suggestions as to why the script would just refuse connections for a while and then come back? What can I do to drill down into the cause of "connect to transport spamchk: Connection refused" - Vicki