How to disable the default RBLs used by rspamd?

Question

I'd like to use an RBL in rspamd without using all the preconfigured RBLs, but it seems that the configuration in /etc/rspamd/local.d/rbl.conf can only add new lists, not remove the default ones.

The documentation also describes a way to disable rules (I am not even sure if this disables the checking itself or just assigning points for a match), but it looks like you have to do this for each default rule, and future updates may add new RBLs that are active by default.

How can I disable all default RBLs with a configuration file in /etc/rspamd/local.d without changing the configurations installed by the rspamd package, which will be overwritten by future updates?

Answer 1

Collection items defined in local.d get merged with the default config. If you want to remove something that is defined by default in the list or the collection, you have to use override.d.

Create a file /etc/rspamd/override.d/rbl.conf:

url_whitelist = [];

rbls {
}

You take the module configuration /etc/rspamd/modules.d/rbl.conf and look for its top level collection, in this case rbl { ... }. At the bottom of the file, inside the top level collection, sitting directives that include local, dynamic and override files. Since they are loaded from inside of a top level collection, contents of override files should not contain this top level collection. So, you see items of the collection, url_whitelist = [];, rbls {... }, and a few variables. You just define those in your file.

To copy a configuration from default and tweak, you copy the file from modules.d, remove rbl { and final } and remove three .include lines at the bottom. This is what you put into override.d. Now your override is the copy of the original, but won't be replaced with updates, and you can edit it freely to shape as you like.

The order of processing of those files is as follows. The contents of collections in local.d is merged with the collections in the default; simple values get overridden. Then, dynamic configuration applies, which could override even local.d settings; this dynamic configuration could be updated from the rspamd web interface. Then, override.d is applied with highest priority, so you can put things there to be sure they can't be edited via web interface, because anything defined in override.d files will override things that you can put via web interface.

Answer 2

To remove all RBLs, one needs to create a file /etc/rspamd/override.d/rbl.conf in the override.d directory instead of the local.d directory, which is not merged like the local.d files, but replaces the original config.

The content needs to have an empty RBL section like this:

url_whitelist = [];

rbls {
}

See the answer by Nikita Kipriyanov for more details.

In addition, the fuzzy check module also uses a RBL and needs to be disabled using local.d/options.inc (only overriding a single option)

filters = "chartable,dkim,regexp";

In the default config, the last item in the list is fuzzy_check, which uses an own RBL by rspamd, which also comes with an own usage policy which forbids commercial use and has a (high) query limit.