I've got a cronjob which does this every night:

  0 5 * * *       root    /etc/init.d/spamassassin restart > /dev/null

For a few days now (possibly related to a new cron or syslog), It has started
outputting this error message:

  From: Cron Daemon <root@hostname>
  To: root@hostname
  Subject: Cron <root@hostname> /etc/init.d/spamassassin restart > /dev/null

  May 17 05:00:04.459 [26971] warn: logger: failed to add syslog method: logger: syslog initialization failed

The same thing happens when I restart spamassassin manually on the command
line. I'm guessing something isn't quite right in the init script...

Cheers,
Francois

spamassassin packages on an up-to-date sid system:

lamneth:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/spamassassin restart
Restarting SpamAssassin Mail Filter Daemon: spamd.
lamneth:~$

If the message in question is coming from logger(1) from the bsdutils
package, which it looks like it is, then I don't think it's spamassassin
that's doing it, since spamassassin doesn't use logger.

Do your /etc/init.d/spamassassin and /etc/default/spamassassin files
differ from those included with the package?  (Find them at [1] and [2])

noah

[1]
http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/collab-maint/deb-maint/spamassassin/tags/3.3.1-1/debian/spamassassin.default?revision=15843

[2]
http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/collab-maint/deb-maint/spamassassin/tags/3.3.1-1/debian/spamassassin.init?revision=15843

Hmm, I wonder what's different on my system...

Could it have something to do with the fact that I'm using rsyslog instead
of syslog?

The only difference is that I've got ENABLED=1 in /etc/default/spamassassin.

Cheers,
Francois