Won't filter spam, won't bring up windows

As of August 29th, SpamSieve was behaving normally.

Since then, it no longer filters out any spam (I use Mail, currently). Additionally, I cannot bring up most SpamSieve windows: it will bring up the log in Console, the SpamSieve Help window, and the SpamSieve Manual. Most other requests to bring up windows (Show Corpus, Preferences…, About SpamSieve, Edit Log, etc.) cause a brief blinking of the menu item in question – but nothing happens.

One interesting exception is Add Rule, which brings up a dialog box, all of whose controls are labeled with what I would guess are the control names, rather than with the English captions I’d generally expect (see attached png).

Following recommended procedure, I have not reset my corpus, deleted my preferences, or re-installed SpamSieve. The log is of no help: it last shows a “predicted good” message on August 29th that was, in fact, good.

Help?

Thx, Erik

Which version of Mac OS X are you using?

It sounds like yours is a rare case where the SpamSieve application file is damaged. I suggest quitting SpamSieve and Mail and then dragging a fresh copy of the SpamSieve application into the folder containing SpamSieve. The Finder should ask you what to do; click Replace.

Also, I would expect to see lots of error messages from SpamSieve’s plug-in in the All Messages section of the Console.

Seeing same partially functioning SpamSieve problems
It just started on Friday. I noticed it initially when a few spam messages made it to my Inbox and Training as Spam did not move them out of the Inbox. Seemed odd, but SpamSieve seemed to do some work so I figured it was added to the corpus and manually deleted them.

Over the weekend as several messages slipped through and didn’t move I checked the SpamSieve Log and everything appears to be working properly. It wasn’t until I saw this post that I tried opening the Statistics or Whitelist windows and they wouldn’t come up. So it appears I have the same rare case of a corrupted SpamSieve application.

I’m using 10.5.4 on a 15" MBP and Apple Mail is my mail client. I usually update to the newest SpamSieve when I get the announcement but I can’t guarantee it since the About SpamSieve menu item doesn’t work. Searching through the Info.plist I find “2.7, ©2002–2008 C-Command Software”

There are a number of SpamSieve related messages in the Console. I’ve filtered on “Spam” and attached.

One additional item which might play in to this has to do with the audio notifications. At about the same time I noticed that I frequently hear the Apple Mail New Mail Notification sound but nothing shows up in the Inbox. If I look at SpamSieve’s Console Log I will see a piece of email was correctly processed as Spam. When I receive a good email I will hear both the Apple Mail sound and SpamSieve’s default Basso.

I have not yet updated with a fresh copy of SpamSieve in case there is anything else you would find useful in debugging the problem.

chuck

Rather than figuring, it’s better to check the log to see if the training was successful. In this case, the log might also show that SpamSieve had not been asked to filter those messages.

Why did you need to look in the Info.plist? Does the Finder’s Get Info command not work?

These errors seem to indicate that Mac OS X cannot even find the SpamSieve application file on disk.

That sounds normal to me. If you have Mail’s sounds enabled, it will play sounds for spam messages. And if the message is spam, it shouldn’t show up in the inbox.

I suggest that you immediately install a fresh copy of SpamSieve 2.7.1.

Noted.

No. I didn’t think of looking in Finder and I had a Terminal open already so it seemed easier.

I don’t like the sound of that. I just checked and it was in the Applications directory. I hope this doesn’t foreshadow a larger problem with the hard disk.

Maybe it is. I’ve disabled Mail’s sounds so we’ll see. It could be that I have it muted most of the time and so just have never noticed.

Done. App windows now open properly and when I trained a mail as Spam it was removed from the Inbox.

Thanks very much, Michael. I downloaded another copy of SpamSieve and installed it. All is working perfectly again.

FWIW, here is the sort of console message that had being generated:

9/17/08 8:10:05 AM SpamSieve[998] Couldn’t find MJTApplication.framework
9/17/08 8:10:05 AM SpamSieve[998] *** Assertion failure in -[NSMenuItem initWithTitle:action:keyEquivalent:], /SourceCache/AppKit/AppKit-949.35/Menus.subproj/NSMenuItem.m:182
9/17/08 8:10:05 AM SpamSieve[998] Exception raised during posting of notification. Ignored. exception: ‘Invalid parameter not satisfying: aString != nil’ invoked observer method: ‘*** -[SpamSieve applicationWillFinishLaunching:]’ observer: 0x2406e0 notification name: ‘NSApplicationWillFinishLaunchingNotification’
9/17/08 8:10:05 AM SpamSieve[998] -[MJTSoftwareUpdateController loadWindow]: failed to load window nib file ‘MJTSoftwareUpdateWindow’.

Great!

Yes, these kind of Console errors indicate that parts of SpamSieve are missing and so it needs to be reinstalled.