MailScanner

PathTools v3.26 breaks MailScanner

On servers that are running the perl modules that are a part of PathTools, MailScanner breaks with the recently released v3.26. If you’re suffering from this issue you’ll see MailScanner continually restarting. If you run MailScanner in –debug you’ll see it SegFault. In /var/log/messages you’ll see continual:

MailScanner: Process did not exit cleanly, returned 0 with signal 11

You can confirm which version of PathTools is installed using:

perl -MCwd -e ‘print “$Cwd::VERSION\n”‘

To fix this you need to downgrade PathTools to v3.2501:

wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/K/KW/KWILLIAMS/PathTools-3.2501.tar.gztar -xzf PathTools-3.2501.tar.gzcd PathTools-3.2501perl Makefile.PL makemake installcd ..rm -Rfv PathTools-3.2501*

New MailScanner Script v2.63

Changes:

  • Added abort code if on a VPS running RH9 or earlier as we no longer support these ancient obsolete OS’s

New MailScanner Script v2.62

Changes:

  • Optimised perl module list requirements
  • Added common LWP procedure which provides progress reporting for downloads
  • New Mailscanner v4.66.5:http://www.mailscanner.info/ChangeLog

New MailScanner Front-End (MSFE) v4.21

Changes:

  • Fixed bug in mailwatch for clamd report statistics
  • Added common LWP procedure which provides progress reporting for downloads

New MailScanner Front-End (MSFE) v4.19

We’ve released a new version of MSFE that will upgrade ClamAV and configure and install the clamd ClamAV Daemon process. The procedure will also reconfigure MailScanner to use clamd instead of the Mail::ClamAV perl module which will now no longer be required.We’ve made these changes for two reasons:1. It separates the dependency we’ve had on Mail::ClamAV keeping up with ClamAV developments. The current problem of incompatibility between v0.20 of Mail::ClamAV and ClamAV v0.92 has happened before and held back the upgrade to the latest version of ClamAV2. There is an added benefit that we’ve discovered where this change reduces each MailScanner child processes memory footprint by ~32MB. The clamd process uses around the same amount of memory, but there’s only a need for a single process. So, the saving on the typical system that runs 3 MailScanner children is ~64MBYou will notice that if you attempt to upgrade ClamAV through MSFE before upgrading MSFE itself, you’ll receive an error instructing you yo upgrade MSFE first.

Warning: Latest ClamAV v0.92

The latest version of ClamAV just released (v0.92) is incompatible with the current latest version of the Mail::ClamAV module (v0.20), so you should not upgrade to ClamAV v0.92 until the Mail::ClamAV developer updates their code. This affects anyone using the ClamAV Module in MailScanner. For the time being, you should stay on/install only ClamAV 0.91.2

MailTools v2.* breaks MailScanner

On servers that are running the perl modules that are a part of MailTools, MailScanner breaks with the recently released v2.*. The errors you will see when starting MailScanner look like this:

Variable “$FIELD_NAME” is not imported at /usr/mailscanner/lib/MailScanner/Message.pm line 6907.Variable “$FIELD_NAME” is not imported at /usr/mailscanner/lib/MailScanner/Message.pm line 6910.Global symbol “$FIELD_NAME” requires explicit package name at /usr/mailscanner/lib/MailScanner/Message.pm line 6907.Global symbol “$FIELD_NAME” requires explicit package name at /usr/mailscanner/lib/MailScanner/Message.pm line 6910.Compilation failed in require at /usr/mailscanner/bin/MailScanner line 79.BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at /usr/mailscanner/bin/MailScanner line 79.

You can determine the module version using:

perl -MMail::Header -e ‘print “$Mail::Header::VERSION\n”‘

To fix this you need to downgrade MailTools to v1.77:

wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/M/MA/MARKOV/MailTools-1.77.tar.gztar -xzf MailTools-1.77.tar.gzcd MailTools-1.77perl Makefile.PL makemake installcd ..rm -Rfv MailTools-1.77*

VPS + RH9 + Perl v5.8.8 + MailScanner = Problem

There appears to be a compatibility issue with the above combination and some of the perl modules that come as standard with perl v5.8.8, in particular Sys::Syslog which prevents some perl scripts from functioning correctly on VPS systems. One of those perl scripts is MailScanner. It doesn’t appear to affect real servers running RH9, however they should have been upgraded to a supported OS years ago.The only solutions if you are in this situation are to:1. Move to a VPS running a supported OS (e.g. CentOS v3+ RHE v3+)2. Downgrade perl to v5.8.7 – this is a bad idea since cPanel v11 and some of the latest perl modules that cPanel uses don’t functions as expected on anything older than perl v5.8.83. Uninstall MailScanner – though you are likely to start seeing problems with cPanel in the future due to such incompatibilities