SpamAssassin ignores mailboxes specfic configration when mailbox contains an ampersand

Symptoms

• On a Plesk server, SpamAssassin ignores mailboxes specfic configuration when mailbox contains an ampersand.

• The following can be seen on /var/log/maillog\ for a mailbox e.g., t&s@example.com:

  Jan 23 14:45:22 10-69-43-220 spamd[34601]: spamd: using default config for t&s@example.com: /var/qmail/mailnames/example.com/t_s/.spamassassin/user_prefs

Cause

SpamAssassin does not support the ampersand character with the option --virtual-config-dir:

The set of characters allowed in the virtual username for this path are restricted to:

A-Z a-z 0-9 - + _ . , @ =

This has been reported as the bug PPPM-14793 on Almalinux 8.

Resolution

As a workaround, it is recommended to change the mailbox name or replacing the & with any of the characters above.