ConfigServer Services Blog

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

cPanel: Problems sending email through Squirrelmail

cPanel have created a problem with a recent modification to how webmail, squirrelmail in particular, works on the latest versions of cPanel. In the past, webmail sent using the sendmail binary (exim) and worked without issue. In an attempt to identify outgoing email with the correct cPanel account, squirrelmail is now configured by cPanel to connect directly to the local port 25 under the UID of the account sending email.This causes problems with the cPanel configuration of the security SMTP Tweak option in WHM Server Security which cannot allow through such email without making that option less secure. Enabling it to do so would effectively open up the security tweak in the firewall for any script under a user account to send email out on localhost port 25. There is a workaround option by allowing localhost connections to the SMTP port which will allow squirrelmail to work, but does still reduce the security option level.The SMTP_BLOCK option in csf performs the same iptables configuration as the SMTP Tweak does through WHM and is also affected by this change by cPanel.There are 3 options to workaround this anomaly until cPanel come up with a solution:1. Enable the SMTP_ALLOWLOCAL (“Allow connections to localhost on port 25” option in WHM SMTP Tweak if you don’t use csf) which should allow port 25 connections from localhost (127.0.0.1)2. Disable the SMTP_BLOCK (or WHM SMTP Tweak option if you don’t use csf) option. In doing so, you leave yourself open to exploited scripts sending out spam while bypassing exim3. Use the following workaround mentioned on the cPanel forums:http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?t=71073There is a cPanel bugzilla entry open for this issue:http://bugzilla.cpanel.net/show_bug.cgi?id=5917

New MailScanner Front-End (MSFE) v4.18

Changes:

  • Added improved mysql maintenance of the mailwatch database
  • Updated Mailwatch to v1.04 (fixes PHP v5 compatibility problems)
  • Fixed problem with MailWatch and GeoIP (fixes MySQL v5 compatibility problems)
  • Added MailScanner version display in the WHM UI

Upgrade can be done through WHM > ConfigServer MailScanner FE > Upgrade MSFE

New csf v2.90

Changes:

  • Ensured that Process Tracking doesn’t affect processes running under root
  • Added /usr/local/cpanel/bin/cpwrap to the csf.pignore file for new and existing installations
  • Added Apache v2 checks to Server Checks Report
  • Removed mod_evasive from Server Checks Report as it appears to be less relevant, especially with Apache v2

New MailScanner Script v2.59

Changes:

  • Fixed a problem where DCC was not working with SpamAssassin when running through MailScanner (worked fine through SA directly) caused by undocumented changes in the spam.assassin.prefs.conf MailScanner configuration file and obvious bug in the way MailScanner is calling SA, as SA is behaving differently when called indirectly through MS than if run directly.

New csf v2.89

Changes:

  • Fixed the csf webmin module
  • Added updates to the webmin module
  • Completely removed use of cat in the WHM module and wget/cat from the webmin module

New ClamAV v0.91.2

This release appears to be mostly bug fixes. Upgrade can be done through MSFE or use the following if you don’t have it:http://www.configserver.com/cp/upgrade.html