spamprobe crashes on train and cleanup operations

[Luke Schierer]

luke@schierer@opus001:~$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS
Release: 20.04
luke@schierer@opus001:~$

luke@schierer@opus001:~$ apt-cache policy spamprobe; dpkg -l spamprobe
spamprobe:
  Installed: 1.4d-14build2
  Candidate: 1.4d-14build2
  Version table:
 *** 1.4d-14build2 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-==============-=============-============-=================================
ii spamprobe 1.4d-14build2 amd64 Bayesian spam filter
luke@schierer@opus001:~$

whenever I run spamprobe cleanup, spamprobe train-good (recursively on a maildir via cronjob) or train-spam (also recursively on a maildir via cronjob) it is crashing. I'm attaching one of the crash files created in /var/crash.

[Luke Schierer (lschierer)]

this just startted happening after upgrading from bionic to focal.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1895036/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

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[Luke Schierer (lschierer)]

I copied my database out of the way and created a new one to see if that helped. Working it through a corpus of my saved mail with train-good and this brand-new empty database, I see that it is not crashing on every run, only some of them.
I do not know yet if there is a pattern to when it does and does not crash, the count of emails it will and will not train-good on is not at all consistent.

[Luke Schierer (lschierer)]

I'm unsure, but this may be related to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/spamprobe/+bug/1882418

[Joseph Ishac (jishac)]

Those messages may contain images, can you try the patch I just posted at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/spamprobe/+bug/1882418 and see if that corrects the issue?

[Joseph Ishac (jishac)]

Looking at the attached core dump, it seems that this is in fact the same bug as 1882418, as the back trace shows it crashing when parsing a jpg image in the affected routine. Hopefully, Luke Schierer can confirm with the source emails, but I would consider this bug a duplicate-of-1882418.

[Luke Schierer (lschierer)]

I'm not quite sure how to build a replacement deb with the patch?

[Joseph Ishac (jishac)]

I'm not up on naming conventions, but here is a "build 2p" that can be installed with dpkg -i. To avoid dependency issues, I would install the maintained version of spamprobe and then install this on top of it. To revert, simply remove and then reinstall the maintained version.

Example:

$ sudo apt install spamprobe

$ (RUN YOUR TEST... should fail)

$ sudo dpkg -i spamprobe_1.4d-14build2p_amd64.deb

$ (RE-RUN Test ... should pass)

To revert:

$ sudo apt remove spamprobe
$ sudo apt install spamprobe