I’ve been maintaining a customer mailserver since 2003, growing from 30 users to 200+ users today, it seems how big and fast the company grown, good thing they still engaged me on maintaining their mail/web server.

Turn On Subject Header on Exim Logging

Turning on Subject Header on Exim logging make your life easier for troubleshooting purpose. By default, exim’s logging on mainlog does not provide Subject Header, to turn on follow the steps below;

• 1. Edit Exim’s main config file, using /usr/local/exim/configure
• 2. On the main/global config, usually before ACL section, add the line below

log_selector = +subject +delivery_size +size_reject

• Above log_selector include logging the delivery size of the email, and size_reject. If the email is rejected by the server, you can find out what was the rejected size.

That’s it. Will try to pen down stuff more often

$ wget -q -O - http://ipchicken.com |  grep -o -E '(^|[[:space:]])[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*([[:space:]]|$)'
# By default, FreeBSD doesn't have wget, you can use fetch instead
$ fetch -q -o - http://www.ipchicken.com | grep -o -E '(^|[[:space:]])[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*([[:space:]]|$)'

You need port 80 external/WAN access to perform the task.

Here is how to find out the reverse DNS IP address is pointed to which DNS server for zone delegation.

dig -x 175.136.188.90

; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> -x 175.136.188.90
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 21938
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;90.188.136.175.in-addr.arpa.   IN      PTR

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
136.175.in-addr.arpa.   10800   IN      SOA     ns1.tm.net.my. dnsadm.tmnet.com.my. 2011012113 10800 3600 604800 86400

;; Query time: 37 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.0.1#53(192.168.0.1)
;; WHEN: Sat Jan 22 19:39:12 2011
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 111

The result above shown

• The SOA record shown the IP Address is pointed to ns1.tm.net.my for reverse DNS delegation.
• The zone 136.175.in-addr.arpa is delegating the IP 175.136.188.90

This command is pretty useful when you want to find out is the reverse DNS delegation works correctly.

While doing verbose logging on spine, we saw the message “Spine Timed Out While Processing Hosts Internal” freezing until it reaches the script time out at 40 seconds. The logs didn’t provide much info and the actual fixes are available at Cacti Official Spine Patches website. After apply the patches, Spine 0.8.7g is working on the FreeBSD’s box. Most of our packages installation are through FreeBSD ports, I guess that we have to check on Cacti’s Official website to look for patches. Or the maintainer should grab the latest patches and update from FreeBSD ports

If Spine installation is from FreeBSD ports. Here is the step by step to fixed Spine 0.8.7g problem.

• Go to /usr/ports/net-mgmt/cacti-spine/
• Perform make clean to wipe off previous compiled files
• Do make extract to extract the source files
• On current directory, go to work/cacti-spine-0.8.7g/
• Download the latest patch from Cacti’s website and apply the patches
• Make to build the app from patches
• Make deinstall to uninstall current cacti
• and finally make install to install patched spine into binary folder.

shell> cd /usr/ports/net-mgmt/cacti-spine/
shell> make clean
shell> make extract 
shell> cd work/cacti-spine-0.8.7g/
shell> wget http://www.cacti.net/downloads/spine/patches/0.8.7g/unified_issues.patch
shell> patch -p1 -N < unified_issues.patch
shell> make 
shell> make deinstall
shell> make install

Go to /etc/mail
run “make” command for the first time to generate “yourdomain”.cf and “yourdomain”.submit.cf / “yourdomain”.mc and “yourdomain”.submit.mc file

shell> cd /etc/mail
shell> make
shell> cp freebsd.mc "yourhostname".mc
/usr/bin/m4 -D_CF_DIR_=/usr/share/sendmail/cf/   /usr/share/sendmail/cf/m4/cf.m4 "yourhostname".mc > "yourhostname".cf
cp freebsd.submit.mc "yourhostname".submit.mc
/usr/bin/m4 -D_CF_DIR_=/usr/share/sendmail/cf/   /usr/share/sendmail/cf/m4/cf.m4 "yourhostname".submit.mc > "yourhostname"submit.cf

After mc and mf files have generated. Edit .mc file, look for line below. Change the SMART HOST to your email server’s hostname. It must be hostname and you CAN’T configure IP Address for SMART HOST.

shell> vi "yourdomain".mc

dnl define(`SMART_HOST', `your.isp.mail.server')
define(`SMART_HOST', `relay.server.hostname')

Next copy “define(`SMART_HOST’, `relay.server.hostname’)” and paste it in “yourhostname”.submit.mc. It must be placed before the line of “msp” feature.

define(`SMART_HOST', `relay.server.hostname')
FEATURE(`msp', `[127.0.0.1]')dnl

After configuration has been made, now run "make install" to generate the cf file and replace sendmail.cf and submit.cf

shell> make install
shell> /usr/bin/m4 -D_CF_DIR_=/usr/share/sendmail/cf/   /usr/share/sendmail/cf/m4/cf.m4 "yourhostname".mc >  "yourhostname".cf
install -m 444  "yourhostname".cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
/usr/bin/m4 -D_CF_DIR_=/usr/share/sendmail/cf/   /usr/share/sendmail/cf/m4/cf.m4  "yourhostname".submit.mc >  "yourhostname".submit.cf
install -m 444 iyot.time.com.my.submit.cf /etc/mail/submit.cf

You are basically done, now. Just restart sendmail services.

shell> /etc/rc.d/sendmail restart
shell> Cannot 'restart' sendmail. Set sendmail_enable to YES in /etc/rc.conf or use 'onerestart' instead of 'restart'.
Stopping sendmail_submit.
Waiting for PIDS: 64903.

Ignore the line to change sendmail_enable to YES if your server just do email submit and it doesn't act as incoming email.

In Linux, using “useradd” is pretty common for creating new user access. You can also use “useradd” in FreeBSD, but not directly invoke “useradd” command. Below is the sample of creating new user in FreeBSD with “useradd”.

shell> pw useradd cheryl -c 'Cheryl Windows Admin' -d /home/cheryl -s /usr/local/bin/bash

New user account is created, but don’t forgot to set password for the account

shell> passwd cheryl

You can run other command like “userdel”, “usermod”, “usershow”, “groupadd”, “groupdel”, “groupmod”, “lock”, “unlock” on FreeBSD by using the “pw” command.

reporter: razor2 report failed: No such file or directory report requires authentication at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.x.x/Mail/SpamAssassin/Plugin/Razor2.pm line 180. at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.x.x/Mail/SpamAssassin/Plugin/Razor2.pm line 330.

I checked the file existed, so It’s something to do with Razor authentication. This is what you need to do fix the error message from SpamAssassin.

shell> razor-admin -create
shell> razor-admin -register

In order to keep my PHP applications running on PHP version 5.2, what I did is upgrade all php5-* packages to php52-*, but it will be a little waste of time if doing it manually, port by port.

So I written this simple bash to output me the packages of php5-* which need to upgrade to php52-*

for d in `portversion -vL= | grep php5 | awk '{print $1}'`; do  OLD=`echo $d | cut -d - -f 1,2`; NEW=`echo $d | sed s/php5/php52/ | cut -d - -f 1,2`; THEPATH=`whereis $NEW | awk '{print $2}' | cut -d / -f 4,5`; echo "portupgrade -o $THEPATH $OLD && \\"; done

The bash will actually output

portupgrade -o textproc/php52-simplexml php5-simplexml && \
portupgrade -o devel/php52-spl php5-spl && \
portupgrade -o databases/php52-sqlite php5-sqlite && \
portupgrade -o devel/php52-tokenizer php5-tokenizer && \
portupgrade -o textproc/php52-xml php5-xml && \
portupgrade -o textproc/php52-xmlreader php5-xmlreader && \
portupgrade -o textproc/php52-xmlwriter php5-xmlwriter && \
portupgrade -o archivers/php52-zip php5-zip && \
portupgrade -o archivers/php52-zlib php5-zlib && \ 

Before upgrading the php extensions package, upgrade your php52 as below

portupgrade -o lang/php52 php5

On the last time, remember to remove “&& \”, or you can press enter key twice to activate the upgrade.

28-Jun-2010 16:28:24.283 general: max open files (3520) is smaller than max sockets (4096)

It’s something to do with kernel setting, on FreeBSD, configure the following

shell> sysctl kern.maxfiles=4096  
shell> sysctl kern.maxfilesperproc=4096

Alternatively, put the above configuration on /etc/sysctl.conf in order to configure it at start up level.

So, it’s advise that to set user’s password after installation. You can set or change user’s password in FreeBSD with passwd command.

Try to have your password in alphanumeric combination, meaning alphabets + numbers and at least 6 characters long. You can do some creative password combination like “go2HELL”, “1amN00b1nUn1x”, “BUYm3b33r”, “h3ySumm3rH0t” and etc. Please do remember, the password is case sensitive too.

To Set Password for Default User “root”

To set the password;

• type: passwd
• input your password twice

To change your password, use the same command and it will prompt you for current password before putting the new one.

To Set or Change Password for Other Userid

Login as “root” and change user’s password, in example userid foo

• Type: passwd foo
• Input your password twice