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Revision as of 01:49, 9 April 2007


SME Server Community - Finding Answers and Getting Help

Before you dive in

As it can be difficult for new people to know what to expect from the community, where to put their information, and how to ask questions, we kindly ask you to carefully read this page as it tries to briefly describe what to expect where. You should also take a look at the Advice for new and existing users.

SME Server is a community product, mainly powered by a small number of developers and a small crowd of contributors within a large user community. There is a wide variety of communication media used and a lot of valuable information shared in this community. All people contributing donate their free time to this product and get nothing in return as SME Server is free, as in beer.

SME Server is a collaborative effort to create a secure and solid server product based on Linux. Development is done by a small team of developers in their free and spare team. The community not only consists of the development team, but also of a very active community and has a lot of information sources and communication media. We encourage you to contribute to the community in any way that you are able including knowledge, time, and financial donations.


Important.png Note:
As a general rule in the SME Server community we ask you to please try searching the information sources provided here before posting or asking for help. Please respect the value of people's time by investing effort on your own part before asking questions.

Thanks very much on behalf of the SME Server community.


Manuals

The manuals are located at SME Server:Documentation.

Purpose

The documentation section contains the manuals and is an extensive source of information. It is a must read for everyone who is willing to use SME Server. It may be large and overwhelming to you at first, but experience, over time, has proven that a lot of problems could have easily been solved or would not have existed if users would have read them. It is also worth your time to re-read the manual after working some time with SME Server as a lot of information that did not stick or did not seem interesting at first might very well be interesting once you gained experience with SME Server.

Information.png Tip:
Although it may sound silly we advise you to read the manuals at least two times.


FAQ

The FAQ can be found at SME Server:Documentation:FAQ.

Purpose

The goal of the FAQ is to be a condensed list of questions raised (more) often in other media used in the community. It lists a wide range of topics all related to use and administration of SME Server.

Wiki

The wiki is where you are at now, a good starting point would be the Main Page.

Purpose

The wiki is a collaborative effort and is a key source of information. It contains a number of manuals and a wide variety of HowTo's and tips, tricks and installation instructions of additional packages.

Guidelines

Please read the Help:Wiki Manual of Style before editing the wiki.

Contribute

Except for a very few, most people in the community were novices with SME at one time. When you are ready to contribute back, this is a good place to start by documenting new solutions.

There is a side benefit for you in that now you also have a secure location for documenting changes you have made to your own environment. As people start to use your solution, they will modify and update with improvements and you too will benefit from the community's expertise.

Take a look at some of the wiki entries that exist as a reference and of course heed Help:Wiki Manual of Style. Be up front about risks, warnings, concerns as not all people who read the entry have the background to identify dangerous situations. You will also note that most modern wiki entries have a Skill Level identification to help others prepare for what they are about to do.

Bug tracker

The bug tracker can be found at http://bugs.contribs.org.

Important.png Note:
If you have discovered a bug or a suspected bug, please submit the issue to the bug tracker and not to the forums. Discussions about the bug should be within the bug tracker. Once you have submitted the bug, you can reference it in the forum as information to others please ensure a link to the bug tracker is provided.


Purpose

The bugtracker is for reporting issues with SME Server and is used extensively by the developers to track problems and new feature request needed for development of SME Server. Here you should report all problems you experience with SME Server installation. All problems or issues you experience with stock SME Server, SME Server contribs or with other products like the wiki and forums should be reported in the bugtracker and not in the forums.

For more information on how to work with the bugtracker please read Bugzilla Help.

Forums

The forums can be found at http://forums.contribs.org.

Purpose

The forums are used for discussions on a variety of topics considering SME Server. Here you can discuss configurations, ask opinions and support that is not provided by the bugtracker. The forums are the places where users can help each other and exchange experiences and knowledge.

It is appreciated that before posting in the forums you first read the manuals and try to search for your answer in the manuals, wiki, forums and bugtracker before posting a question in one of the forum boards.


Important.png Note:
The development team are also members of the forums but please report problems with SME Server in the bugtracker.

Anything that is not working as it should be, can be considered as a bug and should be reported in the bugtracker and not in the forums. Discussions about the bug should be within the bug tracker and not in the forums. Once you have submitted the bug, you can reference it in the forum as information to others. If you do so, please ensure a link or a reference to the bug is provided.

Exactly where the bug lies and whether the SME developers will do anything about it, gets determined in the bugtracker. If they cannot or will not resolve the problem in bugtracker, then you can come back to the forums for further help.


Guidelines

Before posting a question to the forums, we would ask that you take the time to read this page.

This information is provided to help you get answers to your questions more quickly. Everyone who provides answers are volunteers and their time is valuable. Following the guidelines below will help them make the best use of that time to aid as many as possible including, of course, you.

Post your question to the correct forum

This may seem obvious but please try to ensure you post your question to the correct forum and in the correct section (eg, for SME Server 8.x, SME Server 9.x, SME Contribs, etc). If you are unsure in which forum your question belongs, please do NOT double post in multiple forums but instead use the General Discussion forum. Most of us read ALL the forums so we will see your question. Double posting will result in

  1. . you being asked not to double post as opposed to being provided with an answer and
  2. . multiples posts being locked by a moderator where inappropriate.

Use a descriptive title for your thread

Firstly, post your own thread - do not hijack someone else's thread, even if you think your question is related. You may post a link to any related threads that you feel are appropriate.

Use a descriptive title for your thread. This is your one chance to advertise what it is you require help with and persuade people to actually read and potentially answer your question. Do not SHOUT and your question is not urgent (at least not to anyone else). Please do not use txt speak or exclamation marks (!!!!).

Bad example:

Urgent: pls hlp, can't get it to work!!!!!!

This tells us nothing other than it's urgent to you and that something isn't working. It is unlikely to even attract views, let alone answers. If you can't get your title right, what hope do we have that you've actually asked a coherent question in such a way that we may be able to help.

Better example:

Installed SME Server 8.0, need help getting Network to connect (Dell Integrated Broadcom Nic).

Now we know what you've done and those who have dealt with Broadcom Nics will know that it's an issue where they can possibly help. (This also holds for other hardware such as video cards and hard drives. Someone might ignore a subject of network doesn't work but answer a post of realtec card not working if they've had experience dealing with that particular card.)

Composing your question

Again, do not SHOUT and your question is not urgent (at least not to anyone else). Please do not use txt speak and no excessive exclamation marks. Do use good spelling, grammar and punctuation, and split your post up as appropriate into separate paragraphs. We acknowledge that although English is the preferred language of the forums, it is not everyone's first or native language. You do not need to apologize if English is not your native language, just do the best that you can to clearly and concisely describe your problem.

Before posting your question, first think about what your question is. If you don't know what your question is and how to articulate it, it is highly unlikely anyone else will be able to provide a reply. We don't have crystal balls and we can't read minds, also make sure you actually ask a question.

Bad example:

Q: My nic doesn't work!
A: That's a shame, but thank you for sharing it with us. Did you have a question?

Better example:

Q: My nic isn't detected after a default installation of SME Server. Please could anyone assist me in getting it working?

Don't ask questions that can be answered with yes or no, unless you want a yes or no answer, as that's what you'll most likely get.

Bad example:

Q: I can't get Foo to work. Has anyone else managed to get this working?
A: Yes.

Ask realistic questions

Saying you're totally new to Linux and asking how to set up a domain server to authenticate users, provide roaming profiles, file sharing and email services with spam and virus filtering to replace your current server provided by some other company demonstrates totally unrealistic expectations on your behalf. No one is going to be able to help you, as this is likely to be a long term project and not something you are going to achieve over the weekend by asking a couple of questions on a forum.

Provide the relevant information

Research your question or problem. You may find an answer is already provided. Demonstrating that you have researched your question by describing what you have previously done to try to resolve your problem is more likely to persuade a volunteer to help you than if you sit back and expect the answer to land on your plate.

Provide as much useful information as possible to assist others in helping you solve your problem. We don't know what hardware/software you are running, or how you have configured your system unless you tell us. We also can not guess at what error message you may have received.

If you have a hardware-related problem, please provide information about your hardware. We can not help answer questions like "help, my nic isn't working" without knowing what nic you have and what attempts you have made to configure it.

Use commands such as lspci, lsmod, lsusb or dmidecode to gather information about your hardware and provide that in your post.

If you have a software-related question, please provide as much relevant information about your configuration as possible. Provide the version numbers of any software you are using, post the configuration file for the package you are having problems with and check your logs for relevant errors, and post these too (only the relevant errors please, not the whole log file).

If you have a network-related question, please provide as much information about your topology and configuration as possible. For example: network links and type, routers, LAN toplogy, servers, Clients, and Desktops. Where it may be part of the issue, identify the model and version of these items.

If your question relates in any way to the kernel, please show us what kernel(s) you have installed and running by providing the output from the following commands:

uname -a
rpm -qa kernel* | sort

This will help to speed up the process of getting your problem resolved and is likely the first information you will be asked for if you haven't provided it.

What to do if no one answers

Please wait for at least 24 hours. The volunteers on this forum live all over the world. If it's day time where you live, it's going to be night time somewhere else and the person able to answer your question may be sleeping, so give everyone a chance to read your question.

If after 24 hours you haven't received any answers, then you may bump your thread by posting more information. By more information, we mean what you have tried during the last 24 hours to fix the problem. You have been trying to fix your problem, haven't you and not just waiting for someone else to fix it for you?

What to do once you have an answer

It would be nice to thank the member(s) who helped you. We are all the more inclined to help those who take the time to acknowledge the help they have received.

Provide feedback as to what the solution was. This will help the next person with the same problem to identify the solution and so share this knowledge with others.

Congratulations, now you have an answer to your problem, you have gained some valuable knowledge that, hopefully, you'll be willing to share when another Community member asks a similar question. Before you know it, you will be one of the people answering some of the questions, not just asking them. This is how a community works, by giving a little back occasionally. So once you have an answer we hope you'll stay around and become part of the Community.

Mailinglists

The mailinglists can be found at http://lists.contribs.org.

Purpose

The mailinglists are used for a variety of purposes that do not suit the forums, you can think of facilitating in the delivery of commit messages but also for discussion on development that does not fit in the bugtracker.




The Koozali SME Server project

The Koozali Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit corporation that governs the open source Koozali SME Server project. Koozali SME Server is a stable, secure and easy to use/manage linux server that provides common server functionalities out of the box. Many open source contributions are available that can extend the default server functionality making Koozali SME Server an even more powerful and flexible business server solution. Thousands of Koozali SME Severs have been deployed as real or virtual servers and in the cloud to serve many small to medium enterprises, and this number is growing day by day. The Koozali SME Server is free to use but it takes a lot of effort and money to develop, make, and maintain. We therefore ask you for your considerations.

Volunteering

Koozali Foundation Inc. together with its community hosted at https://contribs.org is a collaborative effort of volunteers. You too can contribute to the development and continuity of the Koozali SME Server project as described on our volunteering page. Everybody is welcome to join the already 4000+ member contribs.org community and can contribute with any skill set.

Financial donations

You can also show your support by making financial donations. The preferred way to make financial donations is using the donate option in the forums. You are free to choose any amount and frequency, being monthly, yearly or only once. The benefit of donating through your forums account is that your forum user name will receive a badge, showing your donation status. If you do not have a forum account, you can create one, or select the below PayPal option to make your donations.

Commercial usage

Organizations that use Koozali SME Server for their business, provide professional services related to SME Server or in any other way benefit commercially from the Koozali SME Server project, are kindly requested to consider regular financial donations that reflect their business benefits.

Koozali Foundation Inc. is happy to supply an invoice for any donations received. For more information on invoicing please send a mail to treasurer@koozali.org.

Thank you for your considerations and support!

Skills

Any skills are useful for the SME Server project.

If you are a developer of any kind, we will find something for you to do. Even if you think that you have no Linux skills you can still help. You can tell us if and how you understand the wiki pages, or more precisely, we would like to know what pages you don't understand. Thanks to the insights of new users we can continuously enhance readability of the wiki. Please add remarks to the discussion tabs of the page you are concerned with.

If, on top of that, you can write, you are invaluable. We need a lot of articles. There are thousands of Linux programs around, and more are released every day. In addition, new versions of existing applications are released. There is a need for a lot of hands to write about them and to keep reviews current.

Documentation

Documentation for SME Server was inherited from the prior distribution maintainers, e-smith and mitel. Their work gave SME a great base to work from.

The current developers have continued to improve the SME Server software and to reflect these improvements the Documentation has to develop too. These wiki-based manuals have been put in place to allow anyone to update or add new sections where they see fit.

The core manuals have been protected for stability, but anyone can request access to add and update howto and contrib pages to the wiki. If you've got instructions, solutions to common problems, neat tips and tricks, or just a good way to explain something, we'd love to hear from you. You may want to join our Document mailing lists to discuss your plans and coordinate with other Docteam members.

Wiki Team

This page is built with MediaWiki. The concept of a Wiki is that anybody may add and modify content. On Help:Contents, find a quick tutorial if you're unfamiliar with wikis.

As long as you edit anything on the wiki you are de facto member of the Wiki Team.

To make edits, you need to log in to the wiki. In order to do this, you will need to open an account. The information that SME Server requires for opening an account is very limited and easy to do and can be found here.

After you log in, you will see a toolbar at the top of the page that is always available. There is a link in the toolbar that is labeled with your username. This takes you to your "personal page". Use this page to introduce yourself and don't be shy. Write a word or two about your interests, especially those related to SME Server and Linux. If nothing else, tell us how you learned about SME Server.

Bug and New Feature Verification

You can help improve SME Server by finding and reporting bugs. This helps us to make our software as reliable as possible.

Our bug tracking system, Bugzilla, is used for all SME Server Linux products. If you have never written a bug report, please refer to Bugzilla Help to learn what kinds of information make the report most useful. Your role in that is to report possible bugs only via the bug tracker, and to encourage others to do the same. Refer again to SME_Server:Documentation:QA:Verification for helping with bug fixing and verification, the best way to learn is to fix other peoples' problems.

Information.png Tip:
For an easier way to see new bug or new activity you can look at Bugzilla_Reports

Troubleshooter : There's a lot that non-coders can do to help in the bug tracker to improve bug report quality. We need help in making sure that bug reports are clear, that observations are fully collected, are separated from speculation and attempted workarounds, relevant log files are checked....


Programming

The most obvious way, for programmers, to participate in the development of SME Server is to post a patch as a suggested solution to an existing bug in Bugzilla. Each package has a maintainer, who will contact you to discuss your proposed solution. You may want to join our development mailing lists before you start coding in order to discuss your plans and coordinate with other developers. WIP: Coming on-board


For more information about getting source code and building your own packages, read the SME Server:Documentation:Developers Manual.

Information.png Tip:
If you would like to help or to learn about SME Server 9 you should look at SME_Server_9.0_Development or the Category:SME9-Development

An overview of available roles is visible on SME_Server_Development_Framework


Mailing Lists

The communication among different teams go through a software called Mailman for which you choose the relevant list that interest you. All messages will be received in your email box, you will only respond to the email address of the mailling (ie devinfo@contribs.org for example) that your mail is sent to all registered users on the list . you can choose your Mailing Lists

Languages

A new system translation interface has been installed to facilitate translations of SME Server core packages as well as SME Server contribs, for more information have a look at the Translations page. The translation framework is located at http://translate.contribs.org. You may want to join our Translation mailing lists before you start your work and coordinate with other people.

Contribute

There is an active community in the forum that help all levels of SME Server users. Please have a look at the forum for an overview at http://forums.contribs.org

Suggestions

Visit the New Feature Request (NFR) page in the bug tracker and add your suggestion.

Only software with an OSI-compliant open-source license will be added to the SME Server project.


Is this article helpful to you?
Please consider donating or volunteering
Thank you!

Database variables

Important.png Note:
See following wiki pages for the syntax of access to the configuration database entries from the command line Access from the Command Line and a db command tutorial


SME Server comes with the most used parameters set as variables in its internal configuration databases. These variables are used to store values to be used in the final configuration files. Please, read the SME_Server:Documentation:Developers_Manual:Section2 to understand the template and database process.

These variables are useful to configure your system more easily, as you do not need to modify configuration files directly for most common cases. It also makes it possible to administer the server through its server-manager as the database variables are used to set and change configuration parameters. After editing, the configuration files must be regenerated and affected services need to be restarted.

For example, suppose you need to increase "memory-limit" in php.

You would simply execute these commands at the server console:

db configuration setprop php MemoryLimit 64M
expand-template /etc/php.ini
/etc/init.d/httpd-e-smith restart

The first line changes the value for the memory limit of PHP, the second line regenerates the configuration file and the last line will reload Apache (and subsequently also PHP as this is configured as a module of Apache).


Warning.png Warning:
Database parameters are case sensitive so take great care when typing at the server shell because no error messages are given should you make a typo.


The database system is based on a flat file system, but you should never edit them directly. Instead you should use the db command. More details on using the database system can be found in the SME Server Developer's Guide.


Setting db variables to default values

Important.png Note:
Use of 'config' is a shorthand version for 'db configuration' and therefore only works with the configuration database


Any db variable that has a default value can be reset to the default by deleting the variable entirely, then re-initializing the default database values as follows:

config delprop <key> <prop>
/etc/e-smith/events/actions/initialize-default-databases

Delete a property value

To delete the property

db accounts delprop <key> <prop>

Reset a property value

To reset to an empty value

db accounts setprop <key> <prop> ''


Warning.png Warning:
Database parameters are case sensitive so take great care when typing at the server shell because no error messages are given should you make a mistake.


Concept of the signal-event command

Due to the efforts of the developers, you can further simplify the commands using the signal-event proccess.

For full details see SME_Server:Documentation:Developers_Manual:Section2

Overview of database variables

The next section describes the standard variables defined on SME Server. Please update this list with new standard variables in future SME Server versions.

The tables below have three columns. The first is the variable, the second is the target variable (located in the final configuration file), and the third is the default value.

A lot of the variables can be set using the server-manager but some can not. For example the variable DomainMaster for samba is not important here, because this can be set through server-manager. On the other hand, the variable RecycleBin is important, because it is not accessible through the server-manager.

Configuration files may use database values from a single configuration key, or may use multiple keys. The latter is the case for the /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq configuration file. This file takes it values from multiple database keys such as squid and masq.

It is also possible that multiple configuration files use the same key. An example of this is the httpd-admin key. This key has a variable TCPPort which is used in multiple files (/etc/httpd/admin-conf/httpd.conf and /etc/services).


AppleTalk (atalk)

Usage

db configuration setprop atalk variable value
signal-event workgroup-update
Affected file: /etc/atalk/netatalk.conf
Variable Target Default
MaxClients AFPD_MAX_CLIENTS 20


Warning.png Warning:
The AppleTalk protocol has been removed from SME Server as of version 8.x


Backup

Usage

db configuration setprop backup variable value
signal-event conf-backup
Affected file: /etc/e-smith/events/post-backup/S90eject-tape
Variable Target Default
Device $device /dev/st0
Eject Logical operation no

Console Mode

Usage - Choose either login or auto DB variable.

config set ConsoleMode login
signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot
Variable Target Default
ConsoleMode Console Setting login


Warning.png Warning:
This functionality has been deprecated as of SME Server 9.x


Clam AntiVirus (clamav)

clamav

Usage

db configuration setprop clamav variable value
signal-event clamav-update
Affected file: /etc/clamd.conf
Variable Target Default
ArchiveBlockEncrypted ArchiveBlockEncrypted no
ArchiveBlockMax ArchiveBlockMax no
ArchiveMaxCompressionRatio ArchiveMaxCompressionRatio 300
ArchiveMaxFiles ArchiveMaxFiles 1500
ArchiveMaxFileSize ArchiveMaxFileSize 15M
ArchiveMaxRecursion ArchiveMaxRecursion 8
Debug Debug no
DetectBrokenExecutables DetectBrokenExecutables no
FilesystemScanExclude FilesystemScanExclude /proc,/sys,/usr/share,/var
IdleTimeout IdleTimeout 60
LeaveTemporaryFiles LeaveTemporaryFiles no
LogClean LogClean yes
LogTime LogTime yes
LogVerbose LogVerbose yes
MaxConnectionQueueLength MaxConnectionQueueLength 30
MaxDirectoryRecursion MaxDirectoryRecursion 20
MaxThreads MaxThreads 20
ReadTimeout ReadTimeout 300
ScanArchive ScanArchive yes
ScanHTML ScanHTML yes
ScanMail ScanMail yes
ScanOLE2 ScanOLE2 yes
ScanPE ScanPE yes
SelfCheck SelfCheck 1800
StreamMaxLength StreamMaxLength 25M
Affected file: /etc/freshclam.conf
Variable Target Default
Checks Checks 24
DatabaseMirror DatabaseMirror db.local.clamav.net
DNSDatabaseInfo DNSDatabaseInfo current.cvd.clamav.net
LogVerbose LogVerbose yes
MaxAttempts MaxAttempts 6
clamd

Usage

db configuration setprop clamd variable value
signal-event clamav-update
Affected file: /var/service/clamd/env/MEMLIMIT
Variable Target Default
MemLimit MEMLIMIT 1400000000

DHCP daemon (dhcpd)

Usage

db configuration setprop dhcpd variable value
signal-event remoteaccess-update
Affected file: /etc/dhcpd.conf
Variable Target Default
Bootp bootp deny
startDynamicIPRange range
endDynamicIPRange range

Note: the end of the dynamic IP range will be set to the value of 'endDynamicIPRange' minus the value of pptpd:sessions.

DNS Cache Forwarder (dnscache / dnscache.forwarder)

Usage

db configuration setprop dnscache variable value
signal-event dns-update 

or for some settings

signal-event console-save
Affected files: /var/service/dnscache.forwarder/config, var/service/dnscache.forwarder/root/servers/@
Variable Target Default Options
CacheSize CACHESIZE 1000000 (SME9 10000000) Variable
DataLimit DATALIMIT 3000000 (SME9 12000000) Variable
Forwarder Forwarder not configured a.b.c.d - address of remote DNS server
Forwarder Forwarder2 not configured a.b.c.d - address of remote DNS server

TinyDNS

Usage

db configuration setprop tinydns variable value
signal-event dns-update
Affected file: /var/service/tinydns/env
Variable Target Default
ListenIP IP 127.0.0.1
DataLimit DATALIMIT 300000

FlexBackup

Usage

db configuration setprop flexbackup variable value
signal-event conf-backup
Affected file: /etc/flexbackup.conf
Variable Target Default
Blocksize $blksize 32
TapeBlocksize $mt_blksize 0
BufferProg $buffer buffer
BufferMegs $buffer_megs 20
erase_rewind_only $erase_rewind_only false
Type $type tar

Horde (webmail)

Usage

db configuration setprop horde variable value
expand-template /home/httpd/html/horde/conf.menu.apps.php
Affected file: /home/httpd/html/horde/conf.menu.aps.php
Variable Target Default
MenuArray MenuArray enabled
expand-template /home/httpd/html/horde/config/conf.php
Affected file: /home/httpd/html/horde/config/conf.php
Variable Target Default
Administration Administration disabled
expand-template /etc/e-smith/templates/home/httpd/html/horde/config/prefs.php/200personal
Affected file: /etc/e-smith/templates/home/httpd/html/horde/config/prefs.php/200personal
Variable Target Default
Name 'My Company' 'Horde Webmail'
expand-template /home/httpd/html/horde/turba/config/sources.php
Affected file: /home/httpd/html/horde/turba/config/sources.php
Variable Target Default
freebusy freebusy disabled
SharedAddressBooks SharedAddressBooks disabled

Apache server ibay specific (httpd-e-smith)

see PHP for specific php options for ibays, or see Webhosting contrib.

Usage

db accounts setprop ibayname variable value
signal-event ibay-modify ibayname
Affected file: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Variable Target Default
AllowOverride AllowOverride None
FollowSymLinks FollowSymLinks disabled
Indexes Indexes enabled
PHPRegisterGlobals register_globals disabled
PHPBaseDir open_basedir /home/e-smith/files/ibays/ibayname
SSLv2 SSLProtocol disabled
SSL Force https access to ibay through Apache. disabled


  • these options are specific to SME Server 9 and are not backported to SME Server 8. See bugzilla:8239

Usage

db accounts setprop ibayname variable value
signal-event ibay-modify ibayname

Apache server-manager (httpd-admin)

Affected file: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Variable Target Default
PermitPlainTextAccess no
ValidFrom ip/mask coma separated list

Usage

db configuration setprop httpd-admin variable value
signal-event remoteaccess-update
Affected file: /etc/httpd/admin-conf/httpd.conf and /etc/services
Variable Target Default
TCPPort TCPPort 980

IMAP (imap)

Usage

db configuration setprop imap variable value
signal-event email-update
Affected file: /var/service/imap/config
Variable Target Default
ConcurrencyLimit INSTANCES 2000
ConcurrencyLimitPerIP INSTANCES_PER_IP 12
ProcessMemoryLimit ulimitdata 128000000


Information.png Tip:
The notes on the concurrency limits noted under IMAPS also apply here. See below.


Important.png Note:
for sme9, only the key imap has properties ConcurrencyLimitPerIP,checkConcurrencyLimit,ProcessMemoryLimit. If you set these properties to the key imaps, a migrate fragment will remove them automatically


  • only for SME Server 9
Affected file: /var/service/imap/config
Variable Target Default
AllowPlainText if set to disabled, dovecot will still listen on port 143, but will only accept TLS connexions, even from the local networks enabled/disabled, default is enabled

IMAPS (imaps)

These properties apply to SME versions before 9.0 only. After 9.0, the imap properties are used to control imaps concurrency and memory limits.

Usage

db configuration setprop imaps variable value
signal-event email-update
Affected file: /var/service/imaps/config
Variable Target Default
ConcurrencyLimit INSTANCES 2000
ConcurrencyLimitPerIP INSTANCES_PER_IP 12
ProcessMemoryLimit ulimitdata 128000000
Important.png Note:
For sme9, only the key imap has properties ConcurrencyLimitPerIP, checkConcurrencyLimit, ProcessMemoryLimit. If you set these properties to the key imaps, a migrate fragment will remove them automatically. Look at /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf for default values. ProcessMemoryLimit defaults to 256MB.


Information.png Tip:
You can see if you are running out of the number of available connections in your log file /var/log/dovecot/current (for sme8, it is /var/log/imap/current and /var/log/imaps/current) and look for messages like the log extract below where the ConcurrencyLimitPerIP was set to 12. A 13th connection was attempted and was denied.
@400000005396a2d215b40d9c imap-login: Info: Maximum number of connections from user+IP exceeded (mail_max_userip_connections=12): 
user=<stephane>,  method=PLAIN, rip=90.84.144.xxx, lip=192.168.xx.15, TLS


Information.png Tip:
Mobile devices have a tendency to frequently disconnect and connect from the network. When this disconnect happens, the sessions on the server are not always immediately cleaned up (they get cleaned up after a time out of some minutes). When the email client reconnects, they create new network connections and you get into the situation that these new connections get denied because of the concurrency limit. On the mobile device this may be noted as a "Unable to connect to server" message.


Information.png Tip:
Some email clients use a separate connection per imap folder, so the concurrency limits may occur for users that have many imap folders.


Dovecot

  • Only for SME Server 9

With smeserver-dovecot installed, 4 services in the configuration DB are used

imap and imaps are used to be backward compatible with e-smith-imap (and are used to control the TCPPort of the service, and if it's accessible from local network or from the internet)

dovecot is now the main service entry in the configuration DB. It's used to control various optional features of dovecot


Usage

db configuration setprop dovecot variable value
signal-event email-update
Affected file: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
Variable Target Default
AdminIsMaster if enabled, the admin user will be a master user, and will be able to login as any user. To do so use user1*admin as login and the admin password to log as user1 enabled/disabled, default is disabled
FullTextIndexing will turn on or off the full text indexing. When this option is enabled, a first search in an IMAP folder will trigger indexation. Next searches will be much faster. Read this page before enabling this option enabled/disabled, default is disabled
LogActions will turn on or off extra logging (flag change, move, copy etc…). !! Warning !!: enabling this can generate a huge amount of logs enabled/disabled, default is disabled
Quotas will report the actual used space and the remaining one if the user has a quota limit enabled/disabled, default is enabled


Fetchmail

Various fetchmail settings for email collection

Usage

db configuration setprop fetchmail variable value
signal-event email-update

See the man page for more settings:

https://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-man.html

Affected file: /etc/fetchmail
Variable Target Default
Verbosity For debugging silent/verbose, default is silent
SSL Use SSL enabled/disabled, default is disabled
Protocol POP3 POP/Other, default is POP3
TCPPort Retrieved from smtpd default 25


IPTables firewall (masq)

Usage

db configuration setprop masq variable value
signal-event remoteaccess-update
Affected file: /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
Variable Target Default
Logging Logging most
Stealth Stealth no


Information.png Tip:
Special case is TCPPort and UDPPort from any DB key.

Any Db key named "TCPPort" or "UDPPort" affect masq file.

Currently the following keys are included in masq:

TCPPort:

httpd-admin - sshd - smtpd - ssmtpd



Additional information on customizing iptables

Create a custom-named service definition in the configuration database.

db configuration set <servicename> service

Apply your desired firewall restrictions to any existing SME 'service' or to a custom-named service that you have created. Combine a custom-named service with port-forwarding to create customized firewall rules.

db configuration setprop <servicename> TCPPort <portnumber>
db configuration setprop <servicename> TCPPorts <portnumbers>
db configuration setprop <servicename> UDPPort <portnumber>
db configuration setprop <servicename> UDPPorts <portnumbers>
db configuration setprop <servicename> status enabled|disabled
db configuration setprop <servicename> access public|private|localhost
db configuration setprop <servicename> AllowHosts a.b.c.d,x.y.z.0/24
db configuration setprop <servicename> DenyHosts e.f.g.h,l.m.n.0/24

Effectuate the changes you have made

signal-event remoteaccess-update
Affected file: /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
Variable Target Default
TCPPort --proto tcp --dport <Ports> Pre-configured for default services; no default for custom services
TCPPorts --proto tcp --dports <Ports> No default for custom services; Ranges of ports are defined with a : not a -
UDPPort --proto udp --dport <Ports> Pre-configured for default services; no default for custom services
UDPPorts --proto udp --dports <Ports> No default for custom services; Ranges of ports are defined with a : not a -
status disabled AllowHosts is set to "" (an empty string) unless the status is 'enabled'
access private AllowHosts is set to "" (an empty string) unless access is 'public'
AllowHosts --src ..... --jump ACCEPT Pre-configured for default services; no default for custom services. Default is '0.0.0.0/0' if service is enabled and public.
DenyHosts --src ..... --jump denylog Pre-configured for default services; no default for custom services. If 'DenyHosts' is empty or does not exist then there are no '... --jump denylog' entries created in /etc/init.d/masq.

SpamAssassin

Usage

db configuration setprop spamassassin variable value
signal-event email-update
Affected file: /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
Variable Target Default
DNSAvailable dns_available yes
OkLanguages ok_languages all
OkLocales ok_locales all
ReportSafe report_safe 0
Subject rewrite_header Subject [SPAM]
SkipRBLChecks skip_rbl_checks 0
TrustedNetworks trusted_networks 127.
UseAutoWhitelist use_auto_whitelist 0
UseBayes use_bayes 0
Sensitivity required_hits medium

Sometimes certain spamassassin update servers get corrupted or are not updated frequently. The list is available at: /var/lib/spamassassin/3.003001/updates_spamassassin_org/MIRRORED.BY

MySQL (mysqld)

Usage

db configuration setprop mysqld variable value
expand-template /etc/my.cnf
sv t /service/mysqld
Affected file: /etc/my.cnf
Variable Target Default
InnoDB InnoDB disabled
LocalNetworkingOnly LocalNetworkingOnly yes

Network Time Protocol (ntpd)

Usage

db configuration setprop ntpd variable value
signal-event timeserver-update
Affected file: /var/service/ntpd/env/MEMLIMIT
Variable Target Default
MemLimit MEMLIMIT 35000000
Affected file: /etc/ntp/step-tickers and /etc/ntp.conf
Variable Target Default
NTPServer server pool.ntp.org
SyncToHWClockSupported SyncToHWClockSupported yes
SupportLargeDrift

A new db key for ntpd: SupportLargeDrift. Default value is disabled, which doesn't change the current behaviour. bugzilla: 7979

If set to enabled, it will - add tinker panic 0 at the begening of the ntp.conf - remove the lines

server 127.127.1.0 # local clock
fudge 127.127.1.0 stratum 10

With SupportLargeDrift enabled, the guest is able to resync the clock with the configured ntp server, even after resuming from a suspended state (tested with a ~10min drift, it took about 3 or 4 minutes for the guest to resync the clock after resuming).

db configuration setprop ntpd SupportLargeDrift enabled

Php

see PHP page for all the available options

Usage

db configuration setprop php variable value
expand-template /etc/php.ini
/etc/init.d/httpd-e-smith restart
Affected file: /etc/php.ini
Variable Target Default
MaxExecutionTime max_execution_time 30
MemoryLimit memory_limit 32M
PostMaxSize post_max_size 20M
UploadMaxFilesize upload_max_filesize 10M
AllowUrlFopen allow_url_fopen Off
ExposePHP expose_php : Exposes to the world that PHP is installed on the server Off

Don't forget "M" unit because you get a lot of httpd errors and apache can't start!


Affected file: /etc/php-fpm.d/{ibays.conf,www.conf,custom.conf} and /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf/
Variable Target Default
AllowUrlFopen AllowUrlfOpen disabled, set to enabled
MemoryLimit MemoryLimit disabled, set a M as unit, eg 64M
UpMaxFileSize UpMaxFileSize disabled, set a M as unit, eg 64M
PostMaxSize PostMaxSize disabled, set a M as unit, eg 64M
MaxExecTime MaxExecTime disabled, set time in second without units, eg 60 or unlimited

Virtual Private Network (VPN) (pptpd)

Usage

db configuration setprop pptpd variable value
signal-event remoteaccess-update
Affected file: /etc/ppp/options.pptpd
Variable Target Default
debug debug no
mtu mtu not set by default, add your value (1404) after mtu
mru mru not set by default, add your value (1404) after mru

-

Passive passive enabled
Interfaces Unknown not set by default
Affected file: /etc/pptpd.conf
Variable Target Default
debug debug no

Pro FTP (proftpd)

Usage

db configuration setprop ftp variable value
signal-event remoteaccess-update
Affected file: /etc/proftpd.conf
Variable Target Default
DisableAnonymous DisableAnonymous no

Qmail

You can set the maximum size of email to be sent

Usage expressed in bytes

db configuration setprop qmail MaxMessageSize 15000000
signal-event email-update
Affected file: /etc/proftpd.conf
Variable Target Default
MaxMessageSize The maximum email size for sending 15000000


Qpsmptd

Important.png Note:
For KOOZALI SME 10 server, qpsmtpd replaces smtpd.


Work in progress !!

Usage

config show qpsmtpd
config setprop qpsmtpd variable value
signal-event email-update
Affected file: .conf
Variable Target Default
Authentication Authentication enabled
Bcc Bcc disabled
BccMode BccMode cc
BccUser BccUser maillog
DKIMSigning DKIMSigning enabled
DNSBL DNSBL disabled
Instances Instances 40
InstancesPerIP InstancesPerIP 5
LogLevel LogLevel 6
MaxScannerSize MaxScannerSize 25000000
MaximumDateOffset MaximumDateOffset 0
PatternScan PatternScan disabled
Proxy Proxy blocked
RBLList RBLList bl.spamcop.net,dnsbl-1.uceprotect.net,dnsbl-2.uceprotect.net,psbl.surriel.com,zen.spamhaus.org
RHSBL RHSBL disabled
RelayRequiresAuth RelayRequiresAuth enabled
SBLList SBLList multi.surbl.org,black.uribl.com,rhsbl.sorbs.net
TCPPort TCPPort 25
TCPProxyPort TCPProxyPort 25
TlsBeforeAuth TlsBeforeAuth 1
UBLList UBLList multi.surbl.org:8-16-64-128,black.uribl.com,rhsbl.sorbs.net
URIBL URIBL disabled
VirusScan VirusScan enabled
access access public
qplogsumm qplogsumm disabled
status status enabled
tnef2mime tnef2mime enabled

Samba global settings (smbd)

Usage

db configuration setprop smb variable value
signal-event ibay-modify 
Affected file: /etc/samba/smb.conf
Variable Target Default
RecycleBin recycle disabled
ShadowCopy shadow_copy disabled
DeadTime deadtime 10080
DisplayCharSet display charset ISO8859-1
DosCharSet dos charset 850
LogonDrive logon drive Z
OpLocks oplocks enabled
OsLevel os level 65
ServerString server string SME Server
SMBPorts smb ports 139
UnixCharSet unix charset UTF8
UseClientDriver use client driver yes
LogLevel log level 1

Samba per i-bay settings (smbd)

Usage

db accounts setprop ibay_name variable value
signal-event ibay-modify 
Affected file: /etc/samba/smb.conf
Variable Target Default
Browseable browseable enabled
OpLocks oplocks enabled
RecycleBin recycle disabled
VetoOplockFiles veto oplock files (not set)
Audit full_audit disabled
KeepVersions If RecycleBin is enabled in smbd, then you can keep version of recycle bin disabled, set it to enabled
ShadowCopy If Shadowcopy is enabled in the smbd, then you can turn off per ibay enabled, set it to disabled
cscPolicy set the csc policy (manual, documents, programs, disable) (not set)

Squid Proxy (squid)

Usage

db configuration setprop squid variable value
signal-event proxy-update
Affected file: /etc/squid/squid.conf
Variable Target Default
SSLPorts Configure additional https ports (use single port or multiple ports separated by coma (,) no default value (443 and 563 are hard coded)
SafePorts acl Safe_ports port 80
EnforceSafePorts EnforceSafePorts no

How to configure additional https ports

  • only one port
 config setprop squid SSLPorts 2083
 signal-event proxy-update
  • several ports
 config setprop squid SSLPorts 2083,569,1,568,965
 signal-event proxy-update
  • remove ports
config setprop squid SSLPorts ""
signal-event proxy-update
Affected file: /etc/squid/squid.conf and /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
Variable Target Default
Transparent Transparent yes
Affected file: /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
Variable Target Default
TransparentPort TransparentPort 3128

Alternate Usage for Configuration of an Up-Stream Proxy Server

db configuration set squid-parent-variable value
signal-event proxy-update
Affected file: /etc/squid/squid.conf
squid-parent-variable Target Default
SquidParent name-or-ip-of-upstream-proxy-server (none)
SquidParentPort port-number-used-by-upstream-proxy-server (none)

(un-do using 'db configuration delete SquidParent', 'signal-event proxy-update')

SSH (sshd)

Usage

db configuration setprop sshd variable value
signal-event remoteaccess-update
Affected file: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Variable Target Default
TCPPort Port 22
Protocol Protocol 2
UsePAM UsePAM no
MaxAuthTries MaxAuthTries 2
MaxStartups MaxStartups 10:30:60
MotdStatus MotdStatus (display or not the motd) enabled
PasswordAuthentication PasswordAuthentication no
PermitRootLogin PermitRootLogin no
AllowHosts AllowHosts IP address(es) list


Important.png Note:
Currently in SME 7.2 and up, TCPPort is configurable via server-manager, under Remote Access menu.

To configure AllowHosts: IP address(es) list is a single IP or a comma separated list of IP addresses and/or netmasks (e.g. 16.17.18.19,203.14.64.0/24). Ssh will then only be allowed from those IP addresses. The firewall code will drop ssh connections from any other hosts.


Autoblock_ssh

see AutoBlock#Public_SSH_Acess

Affected file: /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Variable Target Default
AutoBlockTime AutoBlockTime 900
AutoBlockTries AutoBlockTries 4
AutoBlock AutoBlock enabled for sme9/disabled for sme8

smtpd

Warning.png Warning:
OBSOLETE. smtpd has been deprecated in sme10. now the variable is qpsmtpd.


Usage

config setprop smtpd variable value
signal-event email-update
Affected file: /var/service/qpsmtpd/runenv
bugzilla:7846: Changes to Instances or InstancesPerIP require a restart of qpsmtpd:
expand-template /var/service/qpsmtpd/runenv && sv t /service/qpsmtpd /service/sqpsmtpd
Variable Target Default
Instances Total smtp Instances 40
InstancesPerIP smtp-Instances-Per-IP 5


Affected file: /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/smtpgreeting
Variable Target Default
Greeting Hostname portion of the greeting provided by your server to inbound SMTP connections $SystemName.$DomainName


Affected file: /var/qmail/control/helohost
Variable Target Default
HeloHost SMTP Helo / Ehlo value provided by your server when connecting to external SMTP servers to send email $DomainName

yum

Usage

config setprop yum variable value
signal-event yum-modify
Affected file: /etc/yum.conf
Variable Target Default
AutoInstallUpdates Install updates automatically? disabled
check4updates Frequency of Update Checking daily(default but monthly or weekly available) daily
EnableGroups Enable Groups 0
GPGCheck Check GPG signature for repositories 0
PackageFunctions Display individual packages in 'Software Installer' disabled
RandomDelay Random Delay 120
status Yum's status enabled
RestrictRepo Repo names whose contents should be excluded from 'Available Packages' in the 'Software Installer' none
RestrictRPM All or part of an RPM name to be excluded from 'Available Packages' in the 'Software Installer' none
DeltaRpmProcess Only changes between the installed package and the new one are downloaded. Once the delta rpm loaded, a rebuilding process is started only SME10 see bugzilla:8834) disabled (by default)/enabled
DownloadOnlyHour XX (0-23) Set the time when to download rpm updates by yum (only sme10 see [bugzilla:1502]]) default is 04 AM if no property

See also 'db yum_repositories' All available repositories

Usage

db yum_repositories setprop RepositoryName variable value
signal-event yum-modify
Affected file: /etc/yum.smerepos.d/sme-base.repo
Variable Target Default
EnableGroups Enable groupinstall with yum Yes(default)/no
GPGCheck Enable the rpm verification by GPG of the repository signature Yes(default)/no
MirrorList It is the base url where the repository can be found no default value
status Enable the repository in yum, all updates will be installed if enabled disabled/enabled
Visible The repository can be selected from 'Enabled repositories' in the 'Software Installer' in order to be Enabled by Yum if set to yes no
IncludePkgs 'rpm1,rpm2,rpm3' Only rpms mentioned here will be available for installation or upgrade.
Exclude 'rpm1,rpm2,rpm3' rpms mentioned here will be excluded by yum
DeltaRpmPercentage XX Defines the maximum ratio allowed between the delta rpm size and the package size on a per-repository basis: by default, delta rpms can’t be bigger than 75% of the size of the associated rpms, otherwise they are not used. Set to disabled if you don't want to use deltarpm for this repository (only SME10 see bugzilla:8834) default is '75' if no property

Miscellaneous Other DB Variables

Important.png Note:
This is meant to be an easy place to add db variable information if you don't have time to put it into the correct section(s) above. You can find most of the template fragments affected by a given db variable if you execute:
cd /etc/e-smith
fgrep -lR variable templ*/* | less

where variable is the name of the variable using correct capitalization

Note that any command listed here is to be executed on one line!


Command service(s) config file(s) notes
db domains setprop test.com MailServer a.b.c.d
or use FQDN in place of a.b.c.d
eg db domains setprop test.com MailServer aspmx.l.google.com
qpsmtpd; qmail; fetchmail /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/goodrcptto

/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local

/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/

/var/service/qpsmtpd/plugins

/var/service/qmail/control/virtualdomains

/var/service/qmail/control/smtproutes

/etc/fetchmail

Forward all email for the specified domain to the IP address a.b.c.d. a.b.c.d can be either local or remote. By default, the recipient address will be verified as valid on a.b.c.d before SME accepts the inbound message.
config set SquidParent <hostname or IP> squid, diald /etc/diald.filter, /etc/squid/squid.conf Configure squid to peform all web downloads from the specified upstream proxy server
config set SquidParentPort <portnumber> squid /etc/squid/squid.conf Connect to the upstream proxy server using <portnumber>. Defaults to 3128 if 'SquidParentPort' is unspecified. Ignored if SquidParent is not set.
config delete SquidParent squid, diald /etc/squid/squid.conf, /etc/diald.filter Return squid to normal operation (no upstream proxy server)
db accounts setprop username Visible internal ; signal-event email-update n/a n/a Make an email address invisible from outside? (see http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=36302.0)
db accounts setprop pseudonym Visible internal ; signal-event email-update n/a n/a Make an pseudonym email address invisible from outside
db <database> delprop key property ; /etc/e-smith/events/actions/initialize-default-databases various various Restore the developers' default value for property
db <database> delete key ; /etc/e-smith/events/actions/initialize-default-databases various various Restore the developers' default value for each property belonging to the key key
config set AdminIsNotRoot enabled n/a n/a In server-manager panel, changing admin password no more change root password. root password is managed through passwd shell command and admin and root passwords can be distinct passwords.
config setprop smtp-auth-proxy PeerPort xxx; signal-event email-update smtp-auth-proxy none - the smtp-auth-proxy executable (//usr/local/sbin/smtp-auth-proxy.pl) reads the config database directly. Used to change the port number used to connect to the upstream mail server ("SMTPSmartHost" or "Address of Internet provider's mail server"). Defaults to port 25 if PeerPort is not set; uses SSL if port 465 is selected.
db configuration setprop qpsmtpd tlsCipher XXX; signal-event email-update qpsmtpd /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/tls_ciphers By default qpsmtpd only accepts the stronger SSL 3.0 or TLS 1.0 protocols for securing SMTPS connections. If needed, one can set qpsmtpd to also allow the weaker SSL 2.0 protocol. For XXX one can use:

'ALL:!aNULL:!ADH:!eNULL:!LOW:!EXP:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM' (SSLv2/SSLv3/TLSv1)
'HIGH:!SSLv2' (=Default: only allow stronger SSLv3/TLSv1 protocols)

Note: don't forget to use the quotes!!
config setprop pppoe Mlimit <value> pppoe /service/wan/run.pppoe.conf notes. - <value> cannot be set below 100000000 - <value> can be set above 100000000.

If pppoe Mlimit is set to a value below the MIN_MEMORY_LIMIT, currently 100000000, this lower value will not be accepted and Mlimit will be set to the default value (100000000).

command service(s) config file(s) notes. Copy this block when adding new entries to this table.

Port Forwarding

Server manager will create two databases, one for TCP and one for UDP

db portforward_tcp set {port} forward AllowHosts {some.host.ip} Comment {Test} Denyhosts {0.0.0.0/0} DestHost {dest.host.ip} DestPort {port}

db portforward_udp set {port} forward AllowHosts {some.host.ip} Comment {Test} Denyhosts {0.0.0.0/0} DestHost {dest.host.ip} DestPort {port}

Apply with:

signal-event portforwarding-update

Variable Target Default
port Incoming Port for Forwarding none
DestPort Destination Target Port port
DestHost Destination Host IP none
AllowHosts Allowed Hosts 0.0.0.0/0
DenyHosts Denied Hosts 0.0.0.0/0
Comment Notes for this rule none


Chapter 4. Software Configuration

Information for software that comes with the SME Server but may require additional configuration


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Uninterruptable Power Supply

PythonIcon.png Skill level: Advanced
The instructions on this page may require deviations from standard procedures. A good understanding of linux and Koozali SME Server is recommended.


Introduction

The primary goal of the Network UPS Tools (NUT) project is to provide reliable monitoring of UPS hardware and ensure safe shutdowns of the systems which are connected.

The default configuration of NUT, will keep your connected systems operational until a critical battery state is reached (ie battery is nearing exhaustion) and then power down your server/equipment in a controlled fashion. See http://www.networkupstools.org/

If you have an APC UPS, see also Uninterruptable_Power_Supply:APC for an alternative to the standard SME Nut implementation

If you have Dell UPS, this might Help Uninterruptable_Power_Supply:LatestGeekery

Default Configuration (USB)

The default configuration in SME Server for 'NUT' is set by the configuration database properties

Model  = usbhid-ups
status = disabled
type   = service
Important.png Note:
Absence of a 'Master' property setting defaults the configuration to being a Master setup. That is a UPS connected directly to the server via USB or serial cable is assumed. See later for setting as a Slave.

The default is for NUT to be disabled, that is no UPS connected


Most USB connected UPS's will work with these default settings. If using a USB connection just enable NUT as follows:

For SME 10, systemd is now in use. We have created a generic service for your convenience:

config setprop nut status enabled
signal-event e-smith-nutUPS-update
systemctl restart nut-server.service
systemctl restart nut-monitor.service
systemctl restart nut.service
config setprop nut status enabled
signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot

If your USB UPS does not work properly OR you have a serial device then follow the Configuration Options below as required.

Configuration Options

Not all UPS's are supported by USB or the usbhid-ups driver. However NUT supports many UPS's and can be configured under SME Server easily.

Serial Connection

  1. Find the configuration details for your model of UPS. Refer to: http://www.networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html and make note of the driver name and upstype number (if any) in the third column.
    Warning.png Warning:
    Always use the serial cable supplied with the UPS. Standard serial cables won't work with a serial UPS and have been known to cause damage to the UPS. Pay particular attention to any references to cable in in the UPS Model column.

  2. From the console issue the following commands: config setprop nut Model <model> config setprop nut Device <device> config setprop nut Type <type> config setprop nut status enabled Where:
    <model> and <type> are the driver name and type number found above.
    <device> is the serial port that the UPS is connected to eg. /dev/ttyS0. It also possible to use a more readable symlink. See HowTo on udev - symlinks for details. Note: The case of Model, Device and Type.
  3. Check: config show nut
  4. Apply changes and restart server: signal-event post-upgrade signal-event reboot Alternatively, without NUT running or requiring a server reboot: signal-event console-save service nut start
  5. Confirm server is communicating with UPS: upsc UPS@localhost Whenever a UPS event occurs Emails are sent to the admin account.

Configuring as a master

edit the file /etc/ups/nut.conf, and modify the line

MODE=netserver

Set configuration values:

config setprop nut access private TCPPort 3493 
expand-template /etc/ups/upsd.conf
expand-template /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
systemctl restart masq
systemctl restart nut-server 

Configuring as a slave

Set configuration values:

config setprop nut SlaveUPS UPS@192.168.33.11
config setprop nut Master no

Where 192.168.33.11 is your UPS master, that is the computer that is in direct communication with the UPS. The hostname of that computer may also work.

Apply changes and restart server:

signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot 

or (for SME10):

signal-event e-smith-nutUPS-update

Confirm server is communicating with master:

upsc UPS@192.168.33.11

Connecting multiple UPS's

As reference to http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=629 and https://bugs.koozali.org/show_bug.cgi?id=626#c2

1- you will need to do

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/ups/ups.conf/
cp /etc/e-smith/templates/ups/ups.conf/UPS /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/ups/ups.conf/UPS2

then edit content to replace the header to UPS2 and Model and Device to Model2 and Device2


2- Then you need to do

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/ups/upsmon.conf/
cp /etc/e-smith/templates/ups/upsmon.conf/MONITOR /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/ups/ups.conf/MONITOR2

Then edit it to change UPS to UPS2. Then you set Device2 and Model2.


3- Repeat the steps 1 and 2 for as many UPS you have, then finish by

signal-event console-save

UPS Variables and Commands

In some cases you may wish to modify variables on the actual UPS such as the Low Charge/LOWBATTERY setting. This requires the use of the upsrw command and UPS administrative privileges.

You may also want to control the UPS directly from the command line by issuing UPS commands. This requires use of the upscmd command and UPS administrative privileges.

Warning.png Warning:
In general, the UPS data should be left protected and changes to it or issuing of commands well thought out. If you wish to make data changes or issue commands then the administrative privileges can be enabled as below and should then be disabled.


UPS Administrative Privileges

You should check your new password ( AdminPass ) to run upsrw & upscmd. Of course, you could change your password for a easier one to use.

config show nut

To set new admin password in database. The new password would be admin ( change it to suit your need )

config setprop nut AdminPass admin 

To enabled administrative privileges and run command to ups.

config setprop nut AdminUser enabled

Now, to get upsd to recognise admin modification for administrative privileges we expand the template and reload the upsd configuration

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/ups/upsd.users
/usr/sbin/upsd -c reload 


Important.png Note:
To disabled the administrative privileges once you have changed the UPS parameters or issued commands as required, issue the commands
config setprop nut AdminUser disabled
/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/ups/upsd.users
/usr/sbin/upsd -c reload


Warning.png Warning:
Be sure to have e-smith-nutUPS-2.4.0-9.el6.sme.noarch or higher to carry on with these instructions. If you get a lower version, just follow SME8 instruction.

rpm -qa e-smith-nutUPS

If you get NUT running with administrative privileges modification from sme8 instruction, you need to remove the custom template created for this. These variables are taken in charge by the new package.

First you need to delete the custom template file.( This command delete the directory, be sure you don't have personal file present. If the case, delete manualy the file created for administrative privileges )

rm -rf /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/upsd.users

Now, to get upsd to recognise the modification of user, we need to expand the template and reload the upsd configuration

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/ups/upsd.users
/usr/sbin/upsd -c reload 


You should check your new password ( AdminPass ) to run upsrw & upscmd. Of course, you could change your password for a easier one to use.

config show nut

To set new admin password in database. The new password would be admin ( change it to suit your need )

config setprop nut AdminPass admin 

To enabled administrative privileges and run command to ups.

config setprop nut AdminUser enabled

Now, to get upsd to recognise admin modification for administrative privileges we expand the template and reload the upsd configuration

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/ups/upsd.users
/usr/sbin/upsd -c reload 


Important.png Note:
To disabled the administrative privileges once you have changed the UPS parameters or issued commands as required, issue the commands
config setprop nut AdminUser disabled
/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/ups/upsd.users
/usr/sbin/upsd -c reload

In order to be able to use upsrw and upscmd it is necessary to have a suitable additional user defined in the upsd.users configuration file.

In order to create a suitable user we will use SME Servers templating system and configuration database. This is based on an original forum thread[1].

First we need to create a suitable custom template directory

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/upsd.users
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/upsd.users

Create and edit a new file called 'admin' with the following content:

{
    # create admin user for upsd to allow setting of
    # UPS parameters via upsrw

    $OUT .= "";
    return unless (($nut{AdminUser} || 'disabled') eq 'enabled');
    return unless (($nut{AdminPass} || '') ne '');

    $OUT .= "\n";
    $OUT .= "       [admin]\n";
    $OUT .= "               password  = $nut{AdminPass}\n";
    if ( ($nut{Master} || 'yes') ne 'no') {
       $OUT .= "               allowfrom = localhost\n";
    } else {
       $OUT .= "               allowfrom = localhost localnet\n";
    }
    $OUT .= "               actions   = set\n";
    $OUT .= "               instcmds  = all\n";
}

Create two new database properties for nut

config setprop nut AdminUser enabled                (This enables the creation of the user in the template above)
config setprop nut AdminPass admin                  (This sets a password for the admin user. Set to whatever you want)

Now, to get upsd to recognise the new user with the required administrative privileges we expand the template and reload the upsd configuration

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/ups/upsd.users
/usr/sbin/upsd -c reload


Important.png Note:
To disabled the admin user once you have changed the UPS parameters or issued commands as required, issue the commands
config setprop nut AdminUser disabled
/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/ups/upsd.users
/usr/sbin/upsd -c reload

UPS access

The access of the ups is controled by database properties. The default propertie is set to localhost and give permission to run upsrw & upscmd from localhost only if administrative privileges is set to enabled as above. No slave ups could be connected in this mode. Three choices is available to set access.


  • localhost: the ups access is only from the local machine ( UPS master ).
  • private: the ups access is from your local machine and local network as per define in server-manager panel.
  • public: the ups access is similar to localhost.


To set access properties in the database ( example: localhost )

config setprop nut access localhost  
/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/ups/upsd.conf
 /usr/sbin/upsd -c reload 

In localhost or public mode ( no remote access ), access to your ups is ( UPS name is UPS )

UPS@localhost

In private mode, access to your ups is ( UPS name is UPS )

UPS@localhost or UPS@192.168.1.1 ( ups master IP )
slave ups get access with UPS@192.168.1.1 ( ups master IP )


Setting UPS Variables

In order to set UPS variables it is necessary to have enabled the administrative privileges as above first and you get the possibility to run command from slave ups if access is set to private as above.

In the examples below, it is assumed your UPS name is UPS, that it is local, that the administrative user is admin and password admin. You can verify your UPS name via:

upsc -l

To view a complete list of the UPS variables, both informational and modifiable

upsc UPS

To determine the modifiable variables for your UPS, their current settings and their available setting values execute the command:

upsrw UPS

You can now modify the variables you wish using a command similar to the following (Note the order of the arguments is important, and you may need quotes around the value being set, "20"):

upsrw -s battery.charge.low=20 -u admin -p admin UPS

For remote host (slave UPS ), we need to add the IP from master UPS to run command.

upsrw -s battery.charge.low=20 -u admin -p admin UPS@192.168.2.1

Where the value after -s should be one of the parameters identified by the upsrw ups command. You can of course verify your changes using

upsrw UPS

or

upsc UPS

After you are done, clean up by disabling the upsc administrative privileges:

Warning.png Warning:
Make sure you understand the meaning or the UPS variables and their available setting options. Verify that your changes meet your intended behaviour!


More information on upsrw can be found at:

- Manual page: man upsrw

Changing battery date

An example to update you battery date upon changing it. (use your own password)

upsrw -s  battery.mfr.date=2020/08/31 -u admin -p admin UPS

Issuing UPS Commands

In order to issue UPS commands it is necessary to have enabled the administrative privileges as above first and you get the possibility to run command from slave ups if access is set to private as above.

In the examples below, it is assumed your UPS name is UPS, that it is local, that the administrative user is admin and password admin. You can verify your UPS name via:

upsc -l

To view a complete list of available commands for your UPS:

upscmd -l UPS

You can now issue a command to the localhost UPS with similar to the following:

upscmd -u admin -p admin UPS test.battery.start

For remote host (slave UPS ), we need to add the IP from master UPS to run command.

upscmd -u admin -p admin UPS@192.168.2.1 test.battery.start

Where the command test.battery.start is a valid command for your UPS as previously determined by upscmd -l UPS. Depending upon the command issued you may get broadcast messages and emails relating to and confirming what the UPS is doing.

After you are done, clean up by disabling the upsc administrative privileges.

Warning.png Warning:
Before issuing any commands verify what they do for your particular UPS via the relevant documentation and ensure that the command meets your intended behavioural requirement!

Issuing commands could shutdown your server unexpectedly!


Scheduling Events

Shutdown Time Delay Example

By default NUT will issue a shutdown command as soon as it receives a low battery event from the UPS. There may be instances and installation configurations that require a shutdown sooner, or other events with timed or schedules outcomes. See the man pages etc for further info and example situations.

In essence the upsmon program monitors the relevant UPS and for each NOTIFYFLAG event in upsmon.conf takes immediate action as defined. In order to delay or schedule any actions, the events need to be passed to upssched which can set timers and schedule events.

The following changes to standard SME Server NUT configuration will shut down the server a specified time after receiving the "on battery" signal (the example given is for 2 minutes). It assumes you already have an enabled and working NUT configuration and UPS

To create a timed shutdown before the BATTLOW signal is received, it is necessary to configure upssched and have a script handle the UPS events (upsmon cannot do this).

First we need to create a new custom template directory:

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/upsmon.conf
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/upsmon.conf

Create and edit a new file called 'NOTIFYCMD' with the following content:

NOTIFYCMD /usr/sbin/upssched

Expand the template:

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/ups/upsmon.conf

Now create another a custom template directory

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/upssched.conf
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/upssched.conf

Create and edit a new file called '01CONFIG' with the following content:

CMDSCRIPT /sbin/e-smith/nutUPS.cmd
PIPEFN /tmp/upspipe
LOCKFN /tmp/upslock
AT COMMBAD * EXECUTE commbad
AT COMMOK * EXECUTE commok
AT NOCOMM * EXECUTE nocomm
AT ONBATT * EXECUTE powerout
AT ONBATT * START-TIMER shutdownnow 120     
AT LOWBATT * EXECUTE shutdowncritical
AT ONLINE * CANCEL-TIMER shutdownnow
AT ONLINE * EXECUTE powerup

In the above set the line AT ONBATT * START-TIMER shutdownnow 120 to how many seconds after ONBATT signal you want to shut down

Expand the template:

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/ups/upssched.conf

Create and edit a new script file at:

/sbin/e-smith/nutUPS.cmd

Add the following content:

#! /bin/sh
       case $1 in
               commbad)
                       /bin/echo "UPS communications failure on `date`." | /bin/mail -s"UPS communications LOST" admin
                       /usr/bin/wall "UPS communications failure."
                       ;;
               commok)
                       /bin/echo "UPS communications restored on `date`." | /bin/mail -s"UPS communications restored" admin
                       /usr/bin/wall "UPS communications restored."
                       ;;
               nocomm)
                       /bin/echo "UPS communications cannot be established on `date`." | /bin/mail -s"UPS uncontactable" admin
                       /usr/bin/wall "UPS communications cannot be established."
                       ;;
               powerout)
                       /bin/echo "Power failure on `date`." | /bin/mail -s"UPS on battery" admin
                       /usr/bin/wall "UPS on battery. Shutdown in 60 seconds...."
                       ;;
               shutdownnow)
                       /bin/echo "UPS has been on battery for 60 seconds. Starting orderly shutdown on `date`." | /bin/mail -s"UPS on battery for 60 seconds" admin
                       /usr/bin/wall "UPS has been on battery for 60 seconds. Shutting down NOW!!!!"
                       /usr/bin/sudo /sbin/e-smith/signal-event halt
                       ;;
               shutdowncritical)
                       /bin/echo "UPS battery level CRITICAL. Starting EMERGENCY shutdown on `date`." | /bin/mail -s"UPS battery CRITICAL" admin
                       /usr/bin/wall "UPS battery level CRITICAL. Shutting down NOW!!!!"
                       /usr/bin/sudo /sbin/e-smith/signal-event halt
                       ;;
               powerup)
                       /bin/echo "Power restored on `date`." | /bin/mail -s"UPS on line" admin
                       /usr/bin/wall "UPS on line. Shutdown aborted."
                       ;;
               *)
                       /bin/echo "Unrecognized command: $1"
                       ;;
       esac

Now make it executable by nut user

chmod 754 /sbin/e-smith/nutUPS.cmd
chown root:nut /sbin/e-smith/nutUPS.cmd

Nut requires to use sudo for this process to work, so sudo needs configuring to enable the user nut. By default the /etc/sudoers file is not part of the SME Server template system. To workaround this create a custom template directory:

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/sudoers
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/sudoers

To preserve the content of the original /etc/sudoers file copy that into the custom template directory:

cp /etc/sudoers 10sudoers 

Create and edit a new file called '30nut' with the following content:

nut   ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

Then run:

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/sudoers

Finally to complete the process:

signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot

While testing with the SMEServer v9.1 (circa March 2016), the above nutUPS.cmd script with entries in 01CONFIG template fails due to lack of permissions at the shutdownnow case at:

/usr/bin/sudo /sbin/e-smith/signal-event halt

Tweaking the /etc/sudoers did not mitigate it.

The error in the /var/log/messages is:

Mar 14 13:22:16 svr01 upssched[3507]: Timer daemon started
Mar 14 13:22:16 svr01 upssched[3507]: New timer: shutdownnow (120 seconds)
Mar 14 13:25:16 svr01 upssched[3507]: Event: shutdownnow
Mar 14 13:25:16 svr01 wall[3539]: wall: user nut broadcasted 1 lines (70 chars)
Mar 14 13:25:16 svr01 upssched[3507]: exec_cmd(/sbin/e-smith/nutUPS.cmd shutdownnow) returned 1

However, the nut user has the necessary shutdown permissions:

/usr/bin/sudo -u nut /usr/bin/sudo /sbin/e-smith/signal-event halt

Configure Nut-cgi Monitor Scripts

The nut-cgi rpm contains scripts that can be run via the webserver to monitor the UPS(s).

Download and install

You have to enable the epel repository:

yum install smeserver-extrarepositories-epel -y

then install nut-cgi:

yum install --enablerepo=epel nut-cgi 

then configure it the SME way: Edit file /etc/ups/hosts.conf and add.

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/hosts.conf
echo 'MONITOR UPS@localhost "local UPS"' >/etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/hosts.conf/10localhost
expand-template /etc/ups/hosts.conf

Httpd template

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Now edit and create a new file 92nutupscmon with the following content

{
    $OUT = "";
    my $allow = 'all';
    my $pass = '0';
    my $satisfy = 'all';
    my $name = $nut{'Name'} || 'NUT UPS Daemon Monitoring';
    my $PublicAccess = $nut{'PublicAccess'} || "local";

    for ('exit-if-none')
    {
      if ($PublicAccess eq 'none')
          {
           next;
          }
      elsif ($PublicAccess eq 'local')
          {
            $allow   = "ip $localAccess";
            $pass    = 0;
            $satisfy = 'All';
          }
      elsif ($PublicAccess eq 'local-pw')
          {
            $allow   = "ip $localAccess";
            $pass    = 1;
            $satisfy = 'All';
          }
      elsif ($PublicAccess eq 'global')
          {
            $allow   = 'all granted';
            $pass    = 0;
            $satisfy = 'All';
          }
      elsif ($PublicAccess eq 'global-pw')
          {
            $allow   = 'all granted';
            $pass    = 1;
            $satisfy = 'All';
          }
      elsif ($PublicAccess eq 'global-pw-remote')
          {
            $allow   = "ip $localAccess";
            $pass    = 1;
            $satisfy = 'Any';
          }
 
      $OUT .= "#------------------------------------------------------------\n";
      $OUT .= "# nut multimon - $name\n";
      $OUT .= "#------------------------------------------------------------\n";

      {
        if ((exists $nut{'URL'}) && ($nut{'URL'} ne '')) {
          $OUT .= "Alias  /$nut{'URL'}  /var/www/nut-cgi-bin\n"; 
        }  
      }

      $OUT .= "Alias  /nut  /var/www/nut-cgi-bin\n";

      $OUT .= "\n";
      $OUT .= "<Directory /var/www/nut-cgi-bin>\n";
      $OUT .= "    DirectoryIndex upsstats.cgi\n";
      $OUT .= "    Options +ExecCGI\n";
      $OUT .= "    <Require$satisfy>\n" if ($pass);
      $OUT .= "    Require $allow\n";
      if ($pass)
      {
          $OUT .= "    AuthName $name\n";
          $OUT .= "    AuthType Basic\n";
          $OUT .= "    AuthExternal pwauth\n";
          $OUT .= "    require valid-user\n";
          $OUT .= "    </Require$satisfy>\n";
      }
      $OUT .= "</Directory>\n";
    }
}

Configure databases and expand the template

config setprop nut PublicAccess local
/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf


Important.png Note:
The above sets access to the scripts to local ip addresses only. See the Web_Application_RPM#New_DB_settings for further info and settings

Restart the web server

systemctl restart httpd-e-smith

You have to enable the epel repositories.

yum install --enablerepo=epel nut-cgi 

Edit file /etc/ups/hosts.conf and add.

MONITOR UPS@localhost "local UPS"

The nut-cgi rpm contains three cgi scripts. The rpm does not install them correctly for SME however so the following modifications are needed.

mkdir -p /opt/nut-cgi-bin
chown root:www /opt/nut-cgi-bin
mv /var/www/nut-cgi-bin/upsstats.cgi /opt/nut-cgi-bin
mv /var/www/nut-cgi-bin/upsset.cgi /opt/nut-cgi-bin
mv /var/www/nut-cgi-bin/upsimage.cgi /opt/nut-cgi-bin
chown root:www /opt/nut-cgi-bin/*
chmod 750 /opt/nut-cgi-bin/*
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Now edit and create a new file 92nutupscmon with the following content

{
    $OUT = "";
    my $allow = 'all granted';
    my $pass = '0';
    my $satisfy = 'All';
    my $name = $nut{'Name'} || 'NUT UPS Daemon Monitoring';
 
    for ('exit-if-none')
    {
      if ($nut{'PublicAccess'})
      {
          if ($nut{'PublicAccess'} eq 'none')
          {
           next;
          }
          elsif ($nut{'PublicAccess'} eq 'local')
          {
            $allow   = $localAccess;
            $pass    = 0;
            $satisfy = 'all';
          }
          elsif ($nut{'PublicAccess'} eq 'local-pw')
          {
            $allow   = $localAccess;
            $pass    = 1;
            $satisfy = 'all';
          }
          elsif ($nut{'PublicAccess'} eq 'global')
          {
            $allow   = 'all';
            $pass    = 0;
            $satisfy = 'all';
          }
          elsif ($nut{'PublicAccess'} eq 'global-pw')
          {
            $allow   = 'all';
            $pass    = 1;
            $satisfy = 'all';
          }
          elsif ($nut{'PublicAccess'} eq 'global-pw-remote')
          {
            $allow   = $localAccess;
            $pass    = 1;
            $satisfy = 'any';
          }
      } 

      $OUT .= "#------------------------------------------------------------\n";
      $OUT .= "# nut multimon - $name\n";
      $OUT .= "#------------------------------------------------------------\n";

      {
        if ((exists $nut{'URL'}) && ($nut{'URL'} ne '')) {
          $OUT .= "Alias  /$nut{'URL'}  /opt/nut-cgi-bin\n"; 
        }  
      }

      $OUT .= "Alias  /nut  /opt/nut-cgi-bin\n";

      $OUT .= "\n";
      $OUT .= "<Directory /opt/nut-cgi-bin>\n";
      $OUT .= "    DirectoryIndex upsstats.cgi\n";
      $OUT .= "    Options +ExecCGI\n";
      $OUT .= "    order deny,allow\n";
      $OUT .= "    deny from all\n";
      $OUT .= "    allow from $allow\n";
      if ($pass)
      {
          $OUT .= "    AuthName $name\n";
          $OUT .= "    AuthType Basic\n";
          $OUT .= "    AuthExternal pwauth\n";
          $OUT .= "    require valid-user\n";
          $OUT .= "    Satisfy $satisfy\n";
      }
      $OUT .= "</Directory>\n";
    }
}

Configure databases and expand the template

config setprop nut PublicAccess local
/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf


Important.png Note:
The above sets access to the scripts to local ip addresses only. See the Web_Application_RPM#New_DB_settings for further info and settings

Restart the web server

sv t httpd-e-smith

Usage of Nut-cgi Scripts

Now go to http://yourdomain.tld/nut to see the statistics and information for the UPS at localhost.

By editing /etc/ups/hosts.conf and adding additional network UPS details, nut-cgi can be used to monitor more than one UPS. By the modification above, only the localhost is monitored.

Additional Information

There are template fragments in /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/ups that control the config files located in /etc/ups. The default settings should be OK for most situations. The /etc/nut.conf file must be manually edited like mode=standalone as the templates do not touch this file. In this case it would be:

sed -e 's/^MODE.*/MODE=standalone/' -i /etc/ups/nut.conf

By default, NUT is configured for a USB connected UPS in Master mode, but is disabled. When enabled, NUT will monitor the UPS and take various actions when certain notifications are received. This is controlled by the /etc/ups/upsmon.conf file which among other things lists the notifications and the actions to be taken for each. For example an On Battery event is captured by the NOTIFYFLAG ONBATT entry and the following SYSLOG+WALL+EXEC command string. This string tells upsmon to write the event to the System Log, broadcast a message to all users via Wall, and execute the command denoted by the NOTIFYCMD entry.

SME Server sets the NOTIFYCMD to /sbin/e-smith/nutUPS.notify, and this executable file simply sends an email to the SME admin user with a notification of the event.

Apart from the various events that the UPS and upsmon may notify via the NOTIFYFLAGS a Low Battery event will automatically and immediately cause upsmon to issue the SHUTDOWNCMD as defined in upsmon.conf (signal-event halt) and set a flag POWERDOWNFLAG so it knows on future restart that it is a UPS recovery.

For information on configuration parameters:

man ups.conf
man upsd.conf
man upsd.users
man upsmon.conf
man upssched.conf

For general information:

man upsd
man nutupsdrv

Timeout Issues

If you have comms problems like this you can add a custom timeout:

"USBDEVFS_CONTROL failed cmd blazer_usb rqt 33 rq 9 len 8 ret -110"

Add a new config item. The default is 2

config setprop nut pollInterval 4

Modify the template

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/ups.conf
cp /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/ups/ups.conf/UPS /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/ups.conf/UPS
nano /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ups/ups.conf/UPS

Add the bits between the # comments

{
   my $model = $nut{Model} || "usbhid-ups";
   my $device = $nut{Device} || "/var/lib/ups/hiddev0";
   my $type = $nut{Type};
   my $mfr = $nut{mfr};
   my $mdl = $nut{mdl};
   # Add this
   my $poll = $nut{pollInterval} || '2';
   if ($poll ne '2') {
     $OUT .= "pollinterval = $poll\n";
   }
   # ends here
   $OUT .= "[UPS]\n";
   $OUT .= "\tdriver = $model\n";
expand-template /etc/ups/ups.conf
cat /etc/ups/ups.conf

You should see something like this:

# Copyright (C) 1999-2006 Mitel Networks Corporation
#------------------------------------------------------------
pollinterval = 4
[UPS]

Restart nut

service nut restart

Now check to see the correct timeout:

upsc UPS | grep driver.parameter.pollinterval
driver.parameter.pollinterval: 4

To reset either delete the key, or set it to the default of 2

Further reading

The NUT website is here: NUT

From the above references you can glean which configuration setting does what function, etc.

If you want to modify the operation of NUT from the standard configuration, then you should generally modify the NUT config files by creating custom templates, expanding the templates and restarting service. This will ensure modifications survive a future reboot or reconfiguration.

An example of doing this can be found in the forum [2] and in the section above for UPS Administrative Privileges

See also Known Problem - Restarting Nut


Documentation

Nut is a Software well documented, you can find the TOC here and with an overview



SME Server up to and including version 9.x runs MySQL as a database server.

SME Server 10 uses MariaDB to provide this function. A lot of applications require a MySQL database, among them is the Horde webmail interface which is supplied by SME Server by default.

General

Warning.png Warning:
Koozali SME Server Version 10: MySQL is provided by MariaDB. You can check the version in the usual way, e.g. at the time of writing version 5.5.


The SME Server is based on CentOS, the development team will take their stock RPM's from the CentOS releases. The current version of MariaDB installed on SME Server is version 5.5.68.You can upgrade MariaDB, using their rpms, to a higher version but you are advised not to do so, as this might break your SME Server configuration. The Horde webmail interface relies on MariaDB. Upgrading to version 10.x has potential to break stuff like webmail. If you insist on upgrading MariaDB you may be able to find instructions in the forum, but be advised that no support can be expected from the developers and all bugs reported in the bugtracker will not be taken into account.

Alternatively you can rely on contribs and Red-Hat Software collection to add MySQL 5.7 and MariaDB 10.1 10.2 10.3 or 10.5 as secondary SQL service to satisfy your needs.

MariaDB on SME Server runs on a socket instead of on a port which you might be accustomed to. This is done to improve security as in the view of the development team only the server itself (localhost) needs to have access to the MySQL server. However you can configure MySQL to be accessible from the local network (see below).


Important.png Note:
All MariaDB services provided by core or contribs shares the same /etc/my.cnf file as configuration file. Please respect the sections inside the file when adding some new template-custom depending if you want this be seen by all running version or a specific version. You can refer to MariaDB manual for more information.

While MySQL supports this kind of configuration, for backward compatibility of the contrib MySQL57 we kept a separate config file.


[mysqld]
[mysqld_safe]
[mysql-5.7]
[mariadb-10.1]
[mariadb-10.2]
[mariadb-10.3]
[mariadb-10.5]

Access to MariaDB/MySQL from my application

As stated above on SME Server you have to use socket, this is more secure than using port. By default the service only listen on the server using socket, so trying to connect with any port will result in a failure.

Most application will have to define a string to access the socket, as below pointing to localhost (not 127.0.0.1, nor the LAN ip) and the full path to the socket. In some situation you will have to define the socket path and the host (localhost again and not 127.0.0.1) in variables.

define( 'DB_HOST', 'localhost:/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' );

MariaDB/MySQL root password

There appears to be no password set for the MySQL root password, but this is not true. If you are logged in to the SME Server shell a special mechanism is in place to log you in with MySQL root privileges without prompting you for the password.

The MySQL root password for SME Server is a 72 character random string generated during installation of SME Server. You should never change the MySQL root password as this will break your SME Server configuration. How to login as MySQL root user? describes how to access MySQL with root privileges on SME Server.

Login as MySQL root user

To login as MySQL root user, simply type 'mysql' at the SME Server shell, this will log you in with root privileges.

Resetting the MySQL root password

To reset the password for the MySQL root account. The MySQL root user on SME Server has a random generated password which is generated during installation. You do not need to know this password to login to MySQL with root privileges on SME Server. If you might have changed the MySQL root password you can reset it like this after getting command line access as root user.

systemctl stop mariadb
expand-template /root/.my.cnf
expand-template /var/lib/mysql/set.password
/usr/libexec/mysqld --socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock --bootstrap --user=mysql --skip-grant-tables < /var/lib/mysql/set.password
exit
systemctl start mariadb 
cd /var/service/mysqld
sv d .
expand-template /root/.my.cnf
expand-template /var/service/mysqld/set.password
/usr/libexec/mysqld --bootstrap --user=mysql --skip-grant-tables < ./set.password
sv u .

For SME Server 7.2 and earlier releases do the following (they use the runsvctrl command instead of the sv command):

cd /var/service/mysqld
runsvctrl d .
expand-template /root/.my.cnf
expand-template /var/service/mysqld/set.password
/usr/libexec/mysqld --bootstrap --user=mysql --skip-grant-tables < ./set.password
runsvctrl u .

Restoring accidentally deleted MySQL root user

mariadb 5.5 and up to 10.5
systemctl stop mariadb 
echo "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'`config get DomainName`' WITH GRANT OPTION;">/var/lib/mysql/set.rootuser
echo "GRANT PROXY ON @ TO 'root'@'`config get DomainName`' WITH GRANT OPTION;">>/var/lib/mysql/set.rootuser
echo "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;">>/var/lib/mysql/set.rootuser
echo "GRANT PROXY ON @ TO 'root'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;">>/var/lib/mysql/set.rootuser
expand-template /root/.my.cnf
expand-template /var/lib/mysql/set.password
/usr/libexec/mysqld --socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock --bootstrap --user=mysql --skip-grant-tables <( cat /var/lib/mysql/set.rootuser  /var/lib/mysql/set.password)
exit
systemctl start mariadb 

for MySQL 5.1.73

cd /var/service/mysqld
sv d .
echo 'use mysql;'>set.rootuser
echo "INSERT INTO `user` VALUES ('localhost','root',,'Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y','Y',,,,,0,0,0,0);">>set.rootuser
expand-template /root/.my.cnf
expand-template /var/service/mysqld/set.password
/usr/libexec/mysqld --bootstrap --user=mysql --skip-grant-tables < set.rootuser
/usr/libexec/mysqld --bootstrap --user=mysql --skip-grant-tables < set.password
sv u .

Note: The following is only applicable on SME 7.3 and MySQL 4.1

cd /var/service/mysqld
sv d .
echo 'use mysql;'>set.rootuser
echo -n 'INSERT INTO user VALUES("localhost","root","",'>>set.rootuser
echo '"Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","Y","","","","",0,0,0);'>>set.rootuser
expand-template /root/.my.cnf
expand-template /var/service/mysqld/set.password
/usr/libexec/mysqld --bootstrap --user=mysql --skip-grant-tables < set.rootuser
/usr/libexec/mysqld --bootstrap --user=mysql --skip-grant-tables < set.password
sv u .

MariaDB/MySQL fails to start

you need to investigate the cause by inspecting two logs :

  • service log
journalctl -u mariadb
  • mariadb log
tail -f  /var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log

Corrupted user table

Your error in mariadb log will include

ERROR: 130  Incorrect file format 'user'

This could mostly occurs after a power outage. mysql.user table is a MYSIAM type

# ll /var/lib/mysql/mysql/user.*
-rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 10630  3 jui 21:08 /var/lib/mysql/mysql/user.frm
-rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql   488  3 jui 21:08 /var/lib/mysql/mysql/user.MYD
-rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql  2048  3 jui 21:08 /var/lib/mysql/mysql/user.MYI

In this case you might see user.MYD or user.MYI with 0 byte size. If the issue is on MYI this is the index you should be able to rebuild, if it is on the MYD, this is the data, you will need a backup to restore from.

as root, first start mariadb without grant table

systemctl stop mariadb
/usr/libexec/mysqld --defaults-file=/etc/my.cnf --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib/mysql  --user=mysql --skip-grant-tables
Warning.png Warning:
be careful that mariadb will be running without any user auth, if it is open to outside of your server, then you might want to close this access first, and keep this session as short as possible


then use mysql command line

mysqlcheck mysql

if wound any error try

mysqlcheck mysql --repair

if it fails then you needs to do a restore. You might have a dump in /home/e-smith/db/mysql/mysql.dump. Wishing it is up to date. I suggest you to copy it and just extract the part for the table you are missing. You need what is under

--
-- Table structure for table `user`
--

and

--
-- Dumping data for table `user`
--

Considering your table dump is now in a file called /home/e-smith/db/mysql/mysql.user.dump, do

mysql mysql < /home/e-smith/db/mysql/mysql.user.dump
expand-template /var/lib/mysql/set.password
mysql mysql < /var/lib/mysql/set.password
mysqladmin shutdown
systemctl start mariadb


Warning.png Warning:
the line dumping the table mysql.user to the mariadb server will delete any existing entries in the table if you are using the default SME dump as it has a DROP TABLE IF EXISTS line. So do this only if you know what you are doing.


Access MariaDB/MySQL using port from the localhost and local network

MariaDB/MySQL on SME Server runs on a socket instead of on a port. MariaDB/MySQL on SME Server is by default configured to allow only localhost connections to improve security, this means that it is only accessible from the server itself and not from the local network nor from the internet. If you wish to enable local network access, execute the following commands on a SME Server shell as root (note access private is not needed as this is the default, and TCPPort 3306 neither as all ports are open to the LAN by default):


Warning.png Warning:
Keep in mind that by default MariaDB/MySQL is not using any kind of encryption unless you did work on that yourself, so any access to the port from the LAN will be as clear text and anyone on the LAN will be able to access to the password and all the data transferred between your server and the client. Refers to the manual of your database version.


config setprop mariadb LocalNetworkingOnly no
expand-template /etc/my.cnf
systemctl restart /service/mysqld
config setprop mysqld LocalNetworkingOnly no
expand-template /etc/my.cnf
sv t /service/mysqld

Access MySQL from a remote network

If you wish to enable access to MariaDB/MySQL databases from remote networks, then in addition to the LocalNetworkingOnly db setting mentioned above, you will need to execute the following commands:

config set mariadb service access public status enabled TCPPort 3306 
signal-event remoteaccess-update 
signal-event smeserver-mysql-update
config set mysqld service access public status enabled TCPPort 3306 
signal-event remoteaccess-update 
signal-event reboot

Keep in mind this enables access to your MariaDB/MySQL database for ANYONE, so make sure you have strong passwords on ALL your MariaDB/MySQL databases. Alternatively it would be a more secure approach to require external (remote) users to establish a VPN connection and effectively become part of the local network. In that case do not change the mysql access to public status using the above command.


Warning.png Warning:
Keep in mind that by default MariaDB/MySQL is not using any kind of encryption unless you did work on that yourself, so any access to the port from the WAN will be as clear text and anyone on the Internet will be able to access to the password and all the data transferred between your server and the client. Refers to the manual of your database version.


Create MariaDB/MySQL user(s) with access from other computers

SME Server's default MariaDB/MySQL database users, and most of the database examples in the wiki, allow login only from localhost.

If you want to access a MariaDB/MySQL database on your SME server from other computers, you must not only make the configuration changes described above, you must also create a user who is allowed to login from those systems (see 5.5.4. Access Control, Stage 1: Connection Verification for more detail).

Allow mysql login from any LAN workstation

Assuming your local network is 192.168.1.0, you can create a user with MariaDB/MySQL access from any LAN workstation (or VPN client) using the command shown below (courtesy of DarkMirage).

Information.png Tip:
The suggestion here is to assign privileges based on IP number (using a wild card if desired), the same can also be done for hostnames. In some cases, like dynamicaly assgned IP addresses, this might be a more suitable and robust solution.


You probably want to change:

  • the database name (MyDB)
  • the user name (MyUser)
  • the password (MyPW) and
  • the allowed computers (192.168.1.%)
## In the command below, \ escapes a linebreak.
   ## Either include them, or place the entire command on one line
   mysql -e "\
   create database MyDB; \
   GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,ALTER \
   ON *.* \
   TO 'MyUser'@'192.168.1.%' \
   IDENTIFIED BY 'MyPW'; \
   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;"

Security Implications of allowing remote MariaDB/MySQL login

It is technically possible to combine the above techniques to allow remote MariaDB/MySQL login from any host on the Internet (allow network login, open the firewall, then set the network address to '%'). This would be a bad idea.

If you have remote users who need access to your MariaDB/MySQL database(s), encourage them to use a VPN connection, or an SSH tunnel, or (at a minimum), restrict the allowed login hosts to their internet IP address. On top of that, you are encouraged to enforce encrypted connection at the level of you MariaDB/MySQL service to avoid any clear text exchange on the LAN or worse on the Internet.

Enable InnoDB engine

Warning.png Warning:
Version 10 MySQL is provided by MariaDB which already has InnoDB as its default database engine


To enable the InnoDB engine, run the following commands:

db configuration setprop mysqld InnoDB enabled
expand-template /etc/my.cnf
sv t /service/mysqld

To disable the InnoDB engine, run the following commands:

db configuration setprop mysqld InnoDB disabled
expand-template /etc/my.cnf
sv t /service/mysqld

Administration

Information about user managament can be found in the MySQL User Account Management section of the MySQL manual, which holds a lot of useful information, a small section is listed here for convenience.

Create a new database

  • See the developers guide if you wish to automate the creation of a database within an rpm

or

  • Get access to the SME Server shell and issue the following commands:
mysqladmin create 'dbname' --default-character-set=utf8

This will create an empty database called dbname.


Warning.png Warning:
The 'root' user should not be permitted to access the database except from localhost. Each application should have its own database and its own user to access that database.


Creating MySQL user(s)

Decide which permissions you will have to give to the user on what database. Details about this can be found in the MariaDB/MySQL Manual found at the MariaDB/MySQL site. Get access to the SME Server shell and issue the following commands to login to the MySQL server:

mysql

Suppose we want to create a user which has read-only access on all tables in the database called 'test':

GRANT SELECT ON test.* TO 'user'@'host' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

In the above line you will have to fill in the user and the host and/or domain from which you will allow the user access to the SME Server MariaDB/MySQL server (don't forget the single quotes). More information can be found in the MariaDB/MySQL Server Manual at the MariaDB/MySQL website linked here.

Listing available databases

To view a list of available databases on the system you can issue the following command while logged in in MariaDB/MySQL:

show databases;

Remove a database

Get access to the SME Server shell and MariaDB/MySQL and issue the following command:

drop database databasename;

Replace databasename with the name of the database.

Remove a user

Get access to the SME Server shell and MariaDB/MySQL and issue the following command:

USE mysql;
DELETE FROM user WHERE user = 'username';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Replace username with the username you wish to delete.


Information.png Tip:
mysql_setpermission is a command line menu driven utility that can assist in MySQL administration.


Optimizing MariaDB/MySQL default settings for SME 10

Here are the available settings from the configuration database to tweak you MariaDB service. If no default value indicated, please refers the the manual of your database version for its own default value:

key default Role
innodb_file_format barracuda
innodb_file_per_table 1
LocalNetworkingOnly no
OpenFilesLimit 0
MaxConnections
WaitTimeout
QueryCacheLimit
QueryCacheSize 1M
QueryCacheType 1
SortBufferSize
ReadRndBufferSize
TableOpenCache
TableOpenCacheInstances
TmpTableSize
MaxHeapTableSize
ThreadCacheSize 256
KeyBufferSize key_buffer_size
MyisamSortBufferSize myisam_sort_buffer_size
JoinBufferSize 262144
ReadBufferSize
MaxConnectErrors
ConnectTimeout 100
MaxAllowedPacket 16M
SlowQueries


to alter a value, just do

config set mariadb  KeyBufferSize 18M MyisamSortBufferSize 8M
expand-template /etc/my.cnf 
systemctl restart mariadb

if your needed option is not available then create a dedicated template custom. Be careful to use a name starting with a number between 016 and 039.

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/my.cnf/
vim /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/my.cnf/017myvalues
expand-template /etc/my.cnf 
systemctl restart mariadb

Optimizing MariaDB/MySQL default settings for up to SME9

SME Server uses MariaDB/MySQL for the webmail package, and the default configuration is optimized for that.

If you are using the SME server to provide MariaDB/MySQL databases for functions running on workstations, you may need to adjust some of the default MariaDB/MySQL parameters. Keep in mind it is difficult to optimize MYSQL for a number of different applications, as default values that are suitable for one application may not be suitable for another. In determining appropriate settings for MariaDB/MySQL, you will also need to consider the system resources & general specification of the server that MariaDB/MySQL is running on.

Pointers for tuning and optimizing the databases can be found at http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2006/09/29/what-to-tune-in-mysql-server-after-installation/ and http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/214398 and specifically re key_buffer_size at http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/214398

The following example comes from this forum thread http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,46694.0.html and refers to this bug report http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6287

To change the following parameters

key_buffer_size=18M
myisam_sort_buffer_size=8M

Create a custom template fragment & edit it to include your required parameters

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/my.cnf/
vim  /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/my.cnf/016mysetup

Save & Exit

Ctrl o
Ctrl x

Expand the changes & restart mysql

expand-template /etc/my.cnf
sv t /service/mysqld

Check /etc/my.cnf to see that the changes are reflected.


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Thank you!


Information on the email subsystem used in SME Server covering sending/recieving, spam filtering, virus checking, webmail, domains and users.

Troubleshooting

I am having trouble getting sme to send and receive email.

Sending and receiving email are separate functions. You need to investigate each individually.

Sending

If SME server does not send mail, you need to examine the /var/log/qmail/current logs to see what happens when it tries. Most commonly problems can be solved by sending via your ISP's mail server, possibly using encryption and/or authentication. Read the manual.

Receiving

If SME server does not receive mail, then you need to ensure that SMTP connections reach your SME server (DNS settings, router configuration, ISP port blocks) and then you need to examine /var/log/qpsmtpd/current logs to determine what SME server does with the incoming connections. Most problems are DNS, router or ISP issues, and have nothing to do with SME server operation or configuration.

qpsmtpd "Connection Timed Out" errors

See Bugzilla:6888 and Bugzilla:2360

A qpsmtpd timeout error may arise, this is not an issue that is caused by SME server directly, however it can become an issue depending on hardware and configuration settings that are contained in and around other enviroments.

It is discussed under various names

As discussed in Bugzilla:6888 a workaround was found that may help in mitigating the issue.

The tracepath utility (included with SME 8.0 and SME 7.6) can be used to locate non-standard MTU values between your SME server and any remote host.

You can discover the smallest MTU between you and google.com (for example) by running this command, then locating the smallest value of "pmtu" in the results:

tracepath google.com

If tracepath returns any value below 1500 between your SME server and a mail server that you need to receive email from, you may need to reset the MTU on the SME server to match the smallest value returned.

For example, if tracepath returns 1492 (typical for internet connections using PPPoE), you would need to set the MTU on your SME server to the same value (1492) using the following:

config setprop InternalInterface MTU 1492
signal-event post-upgrade; signal-event reboot

Webmail broken after upgrade

After the usual post-upgrade and reboot, webmail is broken with messages like the following in the messages log:

Apr 20 17:29:53 mail [4614]: PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/httpd/html/horde/imp/lib/Block/tree_folders.php on line 65
Apr 20 17:29:53 mail [4614]: PHP Warning:  Unknown(): Unable to call () - function does not exist in Unknown on line 0

As workaround, logout of Horde, close the browser, reopen, log in to Horde, Webmail should now be fully functional. (Based on suggested fix in Bugzilla:5177)

Spam

Spamassassin

Spam filter with Server-Manager

Using the Server-Manager Configuration/E-Mail panel, adjust the settings to these reasonable defaults.

  • Virus scanning Enabled
  • Spam filtering Enabled
  • Spam sensitivity Custom
  • Custom spam tagging level 4
  • Custom spam rejection level 12
  • Sort spam into junkmail folder Enabled
  • Modify subject of spam messages Enabled

I would also recommend blocking all executable content. To do so, select (highlight) all of the attachment types other than zip files (the last two).

Click Save.

How It Works

When receiving an incoming message, the server first tests for RBL and DNSBL listings, if enabled. If the sender is blacklisted, the messages are blocked outright and Spamassassin never sees it.

With this configuration, the spammiest messages, those marked as 12 or above, will be rejected at the SMTP level. Those spam messages marked between 4 and 12, will be routed to the users' (IMAP) junkmail folder. This is done so the users can check for false-positives...valid messages that were classified as spam by SpamAssassin.

Users may check their junkmail folders for false-positives via webmail, or, if they are using an IMAP mail client, by simply checking the junkmail folder exposed by their mail client.

https://servername/webmail

Enable/Disable Filtering Per-User

This procedure doesn't really disable the spam filtering, it just stopps the spam from being routed to the 'junkmail' folder.

Per-user filtering is enabled by default. Disable filtering with the following command, as root:

db accounts setprop USERNAME SortSpam disabled
db accounts show USERNAME                                   # only displays settings
signal-event user-modify USERNAME


Use the Junkmail folder

The Default spamassassin behaviour put spams in the inbox which is very convenient for users in case of false positive, but it is not practical for learning, and especially it does not facilitate the life of the user (setting is available via the manager). If you want to put directly spams in the junkmail folder issue the command above.

config setprop spamassassin SortSpam enabled
signal-event email-update

Message Retention Time

Set spamassassin for automatically delete junkmail. You can change the "days" that spamassassin sets to automatically delete junkmail, to delete after two months

db configuration setprop spamassassin MessageRetentionTime 60  
signal-event email-update 

Spam score Level and Spam score rejection

The "Custom spam rejection level" will only work when "Spam sensitivity" is set to custom.

  1. Open server-manager.
  2. Click e-mail in the navigation pane (left-hand side).
  3. Click Change e-mail filtering settings.
  4. Change "Spam sensitivity" to custom and adjust the settings to your liking.

This happens because by default, no mail (except for viruses) gets rejected without the admin doing something first.

As a reference, the following setting will have the following behaviours :

Sensitivity Spam tagging level Spam rejection level
Custom TagLevel value
(Custom spam tagging level)
RejectLevel value
(Custom spam rejection level)
veryhigh 2 No rejection
high 3 No rejection
medium 5 No rejection
low 7 No rejection
verylow 9 No rejection

X-Spam-Level Header in Email Messages

SME does not create an X-Spam-Level header in processed email messages by default.

To enable this capability:

/usr/bin/yum install --enablerepo=smecontribs smeserver-qpsmtpd-spamassassinlevelstars
signal-event email-update

(Based on Bugzilla:3505)

Important.png Note:
as SME8 this functionality seems to be included --Unnilennium (talk) 09:05, 3 February 2014 (MST)


spamassassin qpsmtpd's plugins email size limit

This db configuration setting sets the maximum email size above which spamassassin will not apply the spam filtering rules as have been set.

The default setting is 500kb, to increase the maximum size, apply the following commands from a root terminal

db configuration setprop spamassassin MaxMessageSize 2000000 

increases message size to 2mb, apply the change with

signal-event email-update

(Based on Bugzilla:7606)

Custom Rule Scores

You can customize the score assigned by a specific Spamassassin rule (SARE_ADULT2 in this case) as follows:

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
echo "score SARE_ADULT2 20.000" >> 20localscores
signal-event email-update

You can now add additional tests and custom scores by editing the newly-created template fragment 20localscores and adding new custom scores using:

nano -w /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf/20localscores
signal-event email-update

Each custom score goes on its own line. If you enter a score surrounded by parentheses, the "custom" score will be added to the default score for the specified test (use score TEST_NAME (-1) to reduce the score for 'TEST_NAME' by 1)

You can remove these customizations using:

rm -f /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf/20localscores
signal-event email-update

References:

SPF mail rejection/flagging policy

Warning.png Warning:
Please note that these instructions do not apply to SME9.2 where the version of qpsmtpd (0.96) does all this out of the box. Indeed if

the custom template below is applied (or left in?) to an SME9.2 system, then you may find that emails are denied when they ought to be accepted!


SME server can protect based of SPF records using spamassassin and the 'sender_permitted_from' plugin. The following lines will enable the plugin.

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0/
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0/
echo sender_permitted_from spf_deny 1 > 30spf
/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0

Then set your custom rule scores using the Custom Rule Scores section of this page. You should base these scores on your settings in server-manager > Configuration > Email > Change e-mail filtering settings or via db config commands for those with that skillset

echo "score SPF_SOFTFAIL 6.000" >> 20localscores 
echo "score SPF_FAIL 14.000" >> 20localscores
signal-event email-update

In our testing an email that doesn't match SPF records and the sender domain owner has defined a soft fail, if is attributed 6 points and sorted to junkmail folder. If the sender domain owner has defined a hard fail the email attibuted 14 points and is subsequently rejected.
References (but instructions changed to meet new qmail structure):

Pyzor Timeout

See Bugzilla: 5973

Warning.png Warning:
SME server 7.# users be aware of an issue that can appear in the /var/log/spamd/current logs

" pyzor: [5281] error: TERMINATED, signal 15 (000f)".


This can be mitigated by the adding of a template fragment.

Template fragment to set a pyzor_timeout based on a value in the config db. If no value is set, there is no output (so pyzor uses it's internal default).

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf/50pyzor_timeout
cd /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf/50pyzor_timeout
nano 50pyzor_timeout

Contents of 50pyzor_timeout

{
  my $pyzor_timeout = ($spamassassin{PyzorTimeout} || 0);
  if ($pyzor_timeout ne '0')
  {
     return "pyzor_timeout " . ($pyzor_timeout);
  }
}

Then a value can be set using:

config setprop spamassassin PyzorTimeout 15
signal-event email-update

Whitelist and Blacklist

If mail comes in and it is misclassified as spam by Spamasassin, you can add the sender to the Spamassassin whitelist so that future messages coming in from that sender are not filtered. Conversely, you can add a spammer to the Spamassassin blacklist so you never see their spam again. Add senders (or their entire domains) to the global whitelist (or blacklist) with commands similar to these (as root):

db spamassassin setprop wbl.global *@vonage.com White
db spamassassin setprop wbl.global *domain2.com White
db spamassassin setprop wbl.global user@domain3.com White
db spamassassin setprop wbl.global spammer@spamdomain.com Black

you can block an entire TLD but please be aware that you might be denying a legitimate email in the future.

db spamassassin setprop wbl.global *@*.xyz Black
db spamassassin setprop wbl.global *@*.link Black

expland template and save the configuration to the database

signal-event email-update

You can view the lists with this command:

db spamassassin show

These lists can be also controlled by the server-manager with the wbl contrib http://wiki.contribs.org/Email_Whitelist-Blacklist_Control

Testing

You can check the auto-learning statistics with this command. You will be able to note the accumulation of the spam tokens (or not). Note that the Bayesian filtering must receive 200 spam messages before it starts to function, so don't expect instantaneous results.

sa-learn --dump magic

You can check the spam filter log with this command:

tail -50 /var/log/spamd/current | tai64nlocal

Check spamassassin configuration like this:

spamassassin -D --lint

If you ever see an error such as:

warn: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /etc/mail/spamassassin/bayes_* R/W: tie failed: Permission denied

Try adjusting some permissions with these commands:

chown :spamd /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin/*
chmod g+rw /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin/*

Real-time Blackhole List (RBL)

Enabling RBL's
RBL's are disabled by default to allow maximum accommodation (your ISP may be on a RBL & you may not know it). You can enable RBL's by:

config setprop qpsmtpd DNSBL enabled RHSBL enabled
signal-event email-update

You can see your RBL's by:

config show qpsmtpd

You can add to your RBL's by:

config setprop qpsmtpd RBLList <rbl-list-name>
signal-event email-update

Many will argue what's best, some say the SME defaults are too aggressive and affect some popular free webmail accounts, but most would agree that you can set stable, conservative and non aggressive settings by:

config setprop qpsmtpd RBLList zen.spamhaus.org
signal-event email-update

A conservative setting for the associated DNSBL SBLList is:

config setprop qpsmtpd SBLList dbl.spamhaus.org
signal-event email-update


Note: More information on this topic can be found here: [3] [4]

Possible issues with RBL

When an external dns provider is set in the console menu, it may interfere with some blacklists activated here (RHSBL and DNSBL). The black.uribl.com is know to bounce all emails in this case with a rejection message delivered to the sender. You can in this case

  • Remove the black.uribl.com of your SBLList
config setprop qpsmtpd SBLList multi.surbl.org:rhsbl.sorbs.net:dbl.spamhaus.org
signal-event email-update
  • Let the SME Server being the only dns resolver by removing the dns provider/forwarder in the console menu.

See http://uribl.com/about.shtml#abuse for more information about this issue with black.uribl.com

Obsolete lists

These lists can not be used with smeserver. A migrate fragment will remove them from your settings each time you reconfigure your server.

  • RBLList
      combined.njabl.org
      list.dsbl.org
      multihop.dsbl.org
      dnsbl.ahbl.org
  • SBLLIST
      blackhole.securitysage.com
      bulk.rhs.mailpolice.com
      fraud.rhs.mailpolice.com
      porn.rhs.mailpolice.com
      adult.rhs.mailpolice.com
      bogusmx.rfc-ignorant.org
      ex.dnsbl.org

Server Only

Some of the spam filter rules cannot work unless the SMESERVER knows the external IP of the box. If you put a SMESERVER in server-only mode behind other firewalls, it will lose some of the anti-spam rules. For example, the rule that blocks attempts where spammers try "HELO a.b.c.d" where a.b.c.d is your external IP address.

Unfortunately, many admins believe that port-forwarding SMTP provides additional security. It doesn't, it limits the SMESERVER's ability to apply some rules.


I want to enable GreyListing

GreyListing support is under the covers and can easily be enabled for those who know what they are doing. However, many experienced users found that they spent more time looking after the greylisting configuration than they received in benefit. see Greylisting

Bayesian Filtering

From Wikipedia:

Naive Bayes classifiers work by correlating the use of tokens (typically words, or sometimes other things), with spam and non-spam e-mails and then using Bayes' theorem to calculate a probability that an email is or is not spam.

SME server supports bayesian filtering, but does not have it enabled by default.

Enabling bayesian filtering, autolearning, and spam/ham training allows spamassassin to learn from received email and improve spam filter performance. Bugzilla: 6822

Bayesian Autolearning

The following command will enable the bayesian learning filter and set thresholds for the bayesian filter.

config setprop spamassassin UseBayes 1
config setprop spamassassin BayesAutoLearnThresholdSpam 6.00
config setprop spamassassin BayesAutoLearnThresholdNonspam 0.10
config setprop spamassassin UseBayesAutoLearn 1
expand-template /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
sa-learn --sync --dbpath /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin -u spamd
chown spamd.spamd /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin/bayes_*
chown spamd.spamd /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin/bayes.mutex
chmod 640 /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin/bayes_* 
config setprop spamassassin status enabled
config setprop spamassassin RejectLevel 12
config setprop spamassassin TagLevel 4
config setprop spamassassin Sensitivity custom
config setprop spamd SpamLearning enabled
signal-event email-update

These commands will:

  • enable spamassassin
  • configure spamassassin to reject any email with a score above 12
  • tag spam scored between 4 and 12 in the email header
  • enable bayesian filter
  • 'autolearn' as SPAM any email with a score above 6.00
Note: SpamAssassin requires at least 3 points from the header, and 3 points from the body
to auto-learn as spam.
Therefore, the minimum working value for this option is 6, to be changed in increments of 3,
12 considered to be a good working value..
  • 'autolearn' as HAM any email with a score below 0.10

Check the bayes stats with the command:

sa-learn --dump magic

The database is located in /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin/bayes

LearnAsSpam / LearnAsHam (spam/ham training)

LearnAsSpam & LearnAsHam are scripts that can be installed on your server to allow users to manually "train" the bayes database. Training is done by users moving Spam from their Inbox to the "LearnAsSpam" folder, and by COPYING real email that was delivered to junkmail into the "LearnAsHam" folder. All messages in both LearnAsSpam and LearnAsHam are deleted once they have been processed and their tokens have been added to the bayes database.

To install:

  • Enable bayes database as described in Bayesian Autolearning (not the best approach, prefer manual learn by user), or
  • Install smeserver-learn as per wiki page Learn(and keep auto-learning off), then
  • Instruct your users to move any SPAM they find from their Inbox to their LearnAsSpam folder, and to COPY any non-spam (ham) they find in their junkmail folder into their LearnAsHam folder.

This is a really efficient way to reduce impact of SPAM to your particular installation. Do not fear to run again files that are tagged as SPAM, as they will either get ignored if all their patterns are known, or the Bayes might catch one more pattern that could help you to get ride of the next incoming SPAM to even get accepted.

If you want, the code below counts how many e-mail are in LearnAsSpam and LearnAsHam directories (of all users). It's useful to know if your users are using those folders. However Learn will send you a report after each pass. If you are interested on the number of emails lefts in the junkmail directory without any attention, you could install smeserver-mailstats and activate the option to account for them

#!/bin/bash
#  ContaLearn.sh

#for compatibility with older versions without rpm, testing
[  `/sbin/e-smith/db configuration getprop LearnAsSpam dir` ] &&
LearnAsSpam=`/sbin/e-smith/db configuration getprop LearnAsSpam dir` || LearnAsSpam='LearnAsSpam';
[  `/sbin/e-smith/db configuration getprop LearnAsHam dir` ] &&
LearnAsHam=`/sbin/e-smith/db configuration getprop LearnAsHam dir` || LearnAsHam='LearnAsSpam';
JunkMail='junkmail';

echo
date
declare -i tspam
declare -i tham
declare -i tleft
declare -i tnseen

printf "%-25s %-11s %-11s %-11s %-11s \n" "User" "LearnAsSpam" "LearnAsHam" "JunkMail" "NotSeen"
pushd /home/e-smith/files/users/ >>/dev/nul
for u in `ls ` #| grep -v admin`
do
[ "$u" = "admin" ] && mailpath="/home/e-smith/" ||  mailpath="/home/e-smith/files/users/$u" ;
  spam=`ls -1 $mailpath/Maildir/.$LearnAsSpam/cur |wc -l`
  ham=`ls -1 $mailpath/Maildir/.$LearnAsHam/cur |wc -l`
  left=`ls -1 $mailpath/Maildir/.$JunkMail/cur |wc -l`
  nseen=`ls -1 $mailpath/Maildir/.$JunkMail/new |wc -l`
  if  [[ $spam > 0 ]] || [[ $ham > 0 ]] || [[ $left > 0 ]] || [[ $nseen > 0 ]];   then
     printf "%-25s %-11d %-11d %-11d %-11d \n" $u $spam $ham $left $nseen
  fi
  tspam=$tspam+$spam
  tham=$tham+$ham
  tleft=$tleft+$left
  tnseen=$tnseen+$nseen
done
echo "----------------------------------------------------------------------"
printf "%-25s %-11d %-11d %-11d %-11d \n" "Total:" $tspam $tham $tleft $tnseen
echo
popd >>/dev/nul

Learn Contrib

The Learn contrib is intended to install and configure the bayes training tools LearnAsSpam & LearnAsHam.

Reset the Bayes Database

Based on this forum post http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,50712.msg258844.html#msg258844 it may be advantageous to remove the bayes database every few years & recreate it, in order to improve spam filtering performance.

Follow these instructions to turn bayes OFF, delete the database, create an empty database, and turn bayes back on:

config setprop spamassassin UseBayes 0
signal-event email-update
'rm' /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin/bayes* 
config setprop spamassassin UseBayes 1
expand-template /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
sa-learn --sync --dbpath /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin -u spamd
chown spamd.spamd /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin/bayes_*
chown spamd.spamd /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin/bayes.mutex
chmod 640 /var/spool/spamd/.spamassassin/bayes_* 
signal-event email-update

Updates to smeserver-spamassasin now require two new config db settings to have bayesian autolearning enabled. See forum post https://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,54320.msg284208.html#msg284208

The Sonora Communications "Spam Filter Configuration for SME 7" howto

http://www.sonoracomm.com/support/19-inet-support/49-spam-filter-configuration-for-sme-7

GeoIP: spam blocking based on geographical information

The GeoIP plugin for Spamassasin lets us know where our mail server is receiving mail from. If we're receiving too much spam from a particular location, this will help track it down. We can then use that info to reject connections from that place taking the load off our server.


Important.png Note:
This can be a crude way of blocking spam and potentially also block legitimate users!


You can find information how to install and use it on the GeoIP page.

Anti Virus

SME Server uses Clam AntiVirus (http://www.clamav.net) as the default and built-in anti virus engine.

Signatures

By default SME Server will automatically get virus signature database updates from ClamAV.

Other people and organizations have developed additional signatures which can also be used with ClamAV to provide extra protection. Databases of these signatures can be downloaded and installed on SME Server, and used by ClamAV

In order to automate the download and installation of the additional databases, as well as control which databases you use, follow the instruction in the Virus:Additional Signatures Howto

Heuristic Scan

HeuristicScanPrecedence is a new option in clamav 0.94.

When enabled, if a heuristic scan (such as phishingScam) detects a possible virus/phish it will stop scan immediately. Recommended, saves CPU scan-time.

To enable this feature:

config setprop clamav HeuristicScanPrecedence yes
expand-template /etc/clamd.conf
sv t clamd

Default is disabled.

Attachment Filtering

The functionality to block possible executable and virus files attached to emails has been incorporated into SME Server v7.x. See the Email panel in server manager.

Additional file signature patterns can be added to the SME defaults. See the Virus:Email Attachment Blocking Howto for further information

Email Clients

"concurrency limit reached" when using IMAP

Sometime shows as Thunderbird giving this error message, This Mail-server is not a imap4 mail-server

To workaround thunderbirds limitations change, this thunderbird setting to false

  • Preferences, Advanced, Config editor (aka about:config): filter on tls.
  • set security.enable_tls to false

If the total concurrency limit is reached, it'll look like this in /var/log/dovecot/current:

@400000005a1c2c1f19c9381c master: Warning: service(imap): process_limit (2) reached, client connections are being dropped

@400000005a1c2c291a4712dc imap-login: Error: read(imap) failed: Remote closed connection (destination service { process_limit } reached?)

@400000005a1c2c291a471aac imap-login: Error: read(imap) failed: Remote closed connection (destination service { process_limit } reached?)


For the per IP concurrency limit, it'll be like this:

@400000005a1c2c6214542b94 imap-login: Info: Maximum number of connections from user+IP exceeded (mail_max_userip_connections=2): user=<someone>, method=PLAIN, rip=192.168.x.y, lip=192.168.z.t, TLS, session=<abcdefgh>

@400000005a1c2c6233f1bcb4 imap-login: Info: Maximum number of connections from user+IP exceeded (mail_max_userip_connections=2): user=<someone>, method=PLAIN, rip=192.168.x.y, lip=192.168.z.t, TLS, session=<ijklmnop>

The following commands will give your the current value:

db configuration getprop imap ConcurrencyLimit || echo 400
db configuration getprop imap ConcurrencyLimitPerIP || echo 12

You can also increase the ConcurrencyLimitPerIP and/or ConcurrencyLimit value for imap and/or imaps (secure)

config setprop imap ConcurrencyLimitPerIP 20
config setprop imaps ConcurrencyLimitPerIP 20
signal-event post-upgrade; signal-event reboot
Important.png Note:
for sme9, only the key imap has properties ConcurrencyLimitPerIP,checkConcurrencyLimit,ProcessMemoryLimit. If you set these properties to the key imaps, a migrate fragment will remove them automatically.


To see configuration:

config show imap
tail -f /var/log/dovecot/current | tai64nlocal  #out of date

More detail can be found here or here.


Information.png Tip:
You can see if you are running out of the number of available connections in your log file /var/log/imaps/current and look for messages like the log extract below where the ConcurrencyLimitPerIP was set to 20. A 21st connection was attempted and was denied.
tcpsvd: info: pid 30693 from 10.1.0.104
tcpsvd: info: concurrency 30693 10.1.0.104 21/20
tcpsvd: info: deny 30693 0:10.1.0.21 ::10.1.0.104:49332 ./peers/10.1.0


Information.png Tip:
Mobile devices have a tendency to frequently disconnect and connect from the network. When this disconnect happens, the sessions on the server are not always immediately cleaned up (they get cleaned up after a time out of some minutes). When the email client reconnects, they create new network connections and you get into the situation that these new connections get denied because of the concurrency limit. On the mobile device this may be noted as a "Unable to connect to server" message.


Information.png Tip:
Some email clients use a separate connection per imap folder, so the concurrency limits may occur for users that have many imap folders.


Mail server is not an IMAP4 mail server

This is a bug in Thunderbird, the previous tips may help.

The Bat

The gives this error message, but they are wrong.
"This server uses TLS v3.0 which is considered to be obsolete and insecure. The server must use TLS v3.1 or above."


Outlook/Outlook Express give error 10060/0x800CCC90

Most likely OUTLOOK (EXPRESS) isn't configured correctly.

-open OUTLOOK
-click TOOLS > ACCOUNTS
-click CHANGE (on the right-hand side)
-find INCOMING MAIL SERVER & OUTGOING MAIL SERVER (on right-hand side)
-type: mail.yourdomain.tld (in both places)
-click MORE SETTINGS (on bottom-right)
-click OUTGOING SERVER tab (at the top)
-checkmark "MY OUTGOING SERVER REQUIRES AUTHENTICATION"
-bullet "USE SAME SETTINGS AS INCOMING MAIL SERVER"
-click ADVANCED tab (at the top)
-find OUTGOING SERVER
-checkmark "THIS SERVER REQUIRES A SECURE CONNECTION" (under outgoing server)
-change 25 to 465
-[possibly required, secure IMAP is 993]
-click OK > NEXT > FINISHED
-you're finished, your email should work now

Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 gives "An unknown error occurred, error code 0x8004011c" when attempting an IMAP connection for a DOMAIN user

This is a known issue with the above combination of Windows and Outlook version as of 2015-02-18 (see: Bug 9618).

The following registry key resolves the issue: To work around this problem, set the value of the ProtectionPolicy registry entry to 1 to enable local backup of the MasterKey instead of requiring a RWDC in the following registry subkey:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Cryptography\Protect\Providers\df9d8cd0-1501-11d1-8c7a-00c04fc297eb] 
"ProtectionPolicy"=dword:00000001

The PortectionPolicy entry may need to be created

Outlook 2013 on Windows 8.1 gives error 0x800CCC1A when sending over SMTP port 465

This is a known issue with the above combination of Windows and Outlook version as of 2015-02-18 (see: Bug 8854).

The following client-side workaround has been suggested on the dovecot mailinglist:

Disable TLS1.2 on the Windows 8.1 client, using a registry entry:

 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS1.2\Client]
 "DisabledByDefault"=dword:00000001
 "Enabled"=dword:00000000

If the registry entry above does not exist on your system, you will have to create it manually.

Whether this is OpenSSL or Microsoft's "fault" is currently not answered.

Outlook test message doesn't come through

You clicked the TEST ACCOUNT SETTINGS in OUTLOOK didn't you? This is a bug in OUTLOOK. The test message sends a test email with 'no Date header'. As the name suggests, this means a message without any date. Since the server doesn't accept mail with 'no Date header' (because it's required) the message is rejected. To test, send an actual message from OUTLOOK.

If you want, you can try THUNDERBIRD. It's like OUTLOOK but made by a different company. It's completely free and works very well at home and at the office.

I can't receive/send email from my application (ACT!, vTiger, MS Outlook, etc)

Most likely, this is a bug the application you're using and not a problem with the SMESERVER. The application sends an email with 'no Date header'. As the name suggests, this means a message without any date. Since the server doesn't accept mail with 'no Date header' (because it's required) the message is rejected.

As a workaround you can disable the check for the 'Date header'. To disable this check on the internal interface:

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local
echo "# 17check_basicheaders disabled by custom template" > \
17check_basicheaders
signal-event email-update

To disable this check for the external interface:

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0
echo "# 17check_basicheaders disabled by custom template" > \
17check_basicheaders
signal-event email-update

After I upgrade my SME Server, my email folders have disappeared when using IMAP

After upgrade, if there are missing IMAP folders, the client may need to re-subscribe to folders. This may affect either webmail users or users who use an IMAP email client.

Entourage: Using SME's Self-Signed Certificate for SSL Connections from Entourage on OS X 10.4

The main problem here is that Entourage will only support trusted, PEM Base-64 Encoded certificates. To use IMAPS or SMTPS from Entourage with your SME server, you will need to:

1. Login to your Mac as a user with administrative privileges

2. Open Safari and browse to https://smeserver/server-manager.  
   When you receive the warning about your certificate:
   - click on "Show Certificate"
   - click and drag the gold-rimmed image of a certificate to your desktop.  
   You will now have myserver.mydomain.tld.cer on your desktop.

3. Locate and open the Microsoft Cert Manager
   - "Import" the certificate you downloaded in step 2.

4. Highlight the imported certificate and "Export" it. 
   - Select the "PEM..." format
   - add "pem." to the beginning of the filename
   - export it to your Desktop

5. Double-click on the new pem.myserver.mydomain.tld.cer  
   - Apple's Keychain Access application will open.
   - Select the X509Anchors Keychain and click "OK"

6. While still in Apple's Keychain Access, select the "Certificates" category
   - Drag pem.myserver.mydomain.tld.cer into the certificates window.

You should now be able to connect to your SME from your Entourage using IMAPS.

If you are accessing your SME server using a different name than the one encoded in the certificate you will still receive a security warning from Entourage, but "OK" will now grant access to your folders.

Notes:

  • Procedure mostly taken from http://www.kerio.com/manual/kmsug/en/ch09s06.html
  • I still get various other IMAP errors due, I suspect, to the "concurrency limit reached" issue.
  • Click on "Show Keychains" in Apple's "Keychain Access" if you need to delete a certificate and try again.

How do I get my e-mail to show the correct From Address

The From address on an e-mail is not supplied by the server. It is supplied by the e-mail client.

  • Configure your Account in your e-mail client with the correct FROM address.
  • You can change the FROM address in webmail with the following:
    • Login to webmail as the user, go to options-personal information and change the identity to have the correct FROM address. You can have multiple identities with a single user.

Some system generated email is created by the server, some contribs may send mail externally, in these cases you need a valid domain name for the server, buy one or use a free provider like dyndns.org

Outlook 365 / Outlook 2019 IMAP Configuration

Microsoft has disabled the ability to enter the IMAP/SMTP username in the account setup wizard in Outlook 365 / 2019 for Windows. The wizard used within Outlook requires that the IMAP/SMTP username be the full email address.

To work around this issue, setup the account using "Mail (Microsoft Outlook 2016)" in the Windows control panel: Screen Shot 2019-12-04 at 6.44.18 AM.png

Server Settings

qmail ConcurrencyLocal

The default value for /var/qmail/control/concurrencylocal is 20. This setting controls the maximum amount of simultaneous local deliveries.

There is a optional database property (does not show unless changed from the default setting) called ConcurrencyLocal for qmail in the config database. The ConcurrencyLocal property changes the value stored in /var/qmail/control/concurrencylocal.

It can be set, for example to decrease the local concurrency limit

config setprop qmail ConcurrencyLocal 6
signal-event email-update

qmail ConcurrencyRemote

The default value for /var/qmail/control/concurrencyremote is 20. This setting controls the maximum amount of simultaneous remote deliveries.

There is a optional database property (does not show unless changed from the default setting) called ConcurrencyRemote for qmail in the config database. The ConcurrencyRemote property changes the value stored in /var/qmail/control/concurrencyremote.

It can be set, for example to decrease the remote concurrency limit

config setprop qmail ConcurrencyRemote 10
signal-event email-update

Refer also this comment by CB

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,50091.msg251320.html#msg251320

How long retry before return e-mail as undeliverable

To configure how long SME server will try to delivery a message before return a permanent error

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/qmail/control
echo 172800 > /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/qmail/control/queuelifetime
expand-template /var/qmail/control/queuelifetime
sv t qmail

The default value is 604800 seconds, or one week.
The example above shows 172800 seconds, or two days (a weekend for infra upgrade!)

source: http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,47471.0.html


Double bounce messages

To stop admin receiving double bounce messages

config setprop qmail DoubleBounceTo someoneuser
signal-event email-update

Or just delete them. You risk losing legitimate double bounces (which are rare, but you want to look at them when they do occur)

config setprop qmail DoubleBounceTo devnull
signal-event email-update

see a longer explaination here

Keep a copy of all emails

You may need to keep a copy of all emails sent to or from your email server. This may be for legal, or other reasons.

The following instructions will create a new user account (default is maillog) and forward every email that goes through your SME server to it.

First, log onto the server-manager and create the user maillog

Go to the SME Command Line (logon as root) and issue the following commands:

config setprop qpsmtpd Bcc enabled
signal-event email-update

Optionally make the forwarding of the emails invisible to the end user. Without it, there will be an X-Copied-To: header in each email. Run this command before the signal-event

config setprop qpsmtpd BccMode bcc

If you want to view the emails, point your email client at the SME and log on as maillog.

You can modify the default user:

config setprop qpsmtpd BccUser someuser

Keep a copy of outgoing emails only

In addition to the commands in the previous section we will also have to create a custom template as follows:

Log in as root or a user with root privileges

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0/
cp /etc/e-smith/templates/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0/13bcc /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0/
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0/
nano -w 13bcc

change the code to:

{
     return "# bcc disabled" unless ($qpsmtpd{Bcc} eq "enabled");
     return "bcc mode " . $qpsmtpd{BccMode} . " outgoing " . $qpsmtpd{BccUser};
}

Save by pressing Ctrl x at the same time and confirm with y

Then enable the changes with

signal-event email-update

More info:

perldoc /usr/share/qpsmtpd/plugins/bcc

Set Helo hostname

Default is set to the hostname.domain, but sometime you might want to have something else to answer with the same as your reverseDNS. You can do one of the followings to only adjust the helo name:

config setprop smtpd HeloHost mydomainname
signal-event email-update

or the following to adjust the way your server will present itself everywhere (httpd, qpsmtd...) This might trigger the generation of new ssl certificate, so use it only if you are sure this is what you want to do.

config set DomainName mydomainname
signal-event domain-modify
signal-event email-update

Set max email size

  • IMPORTANT: bugzilla: 7876 points out that if your system has /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/databytes it should be deleted. (Fixed as of smeserver-qpsmtpd-2.4.0-7.el6.sme.noarch - see bugzilla: 8329).

There are several components involved in sending email on a SME server. Each component has a size limit that may affect an email message that passes through the server.

Be aware that email size is not the same thing as attachment size. Binary attachments to email are encoded using techniques that result in email sizes that can be as much as 30% larger than the original attachment. Most major email clients (Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Outlook) allow you to enable a "message size" column in the message list that will show you the size of your email messages (More).

Subsystem Function Default Limit Command to change size Notes
qmail Delivers email to local mailboxes and to remote servers 15000000 config setprop qmail MaxMessageSize xx000000 Value is in BYTES. 15000000 equals approximately 15MB.
No value means no limit.
clamav Used to scan emails and attachments 15M config setprop clamav MaxFileSize 15M Value includes human-readable abbreviations. "15M" equals 15 MegaBytes.
clamd Involved in attachment virus scanning 1400000000 config setprop clamd MemLimit 1400000000 May require increase per this forum topic
qpsmtpd The clamav plugin to qpsmtpd is called with a specified size limit. 25000000 config setprop qpsmtpd MaxScannerSize xx000000 Value is in BYTES.
Question: does this value override the setting of 'MaxFileSize', or will the smaller value prevail?
php The php maximum file upload size will determine the largest file you can attach to an email message using horde (or any other php email client) 10M config setprop php UploadMaxFilesize 10M

clamav

A note about clamav:
ClamAV includes settings to prevent the scanning of archives that could cause problems if fully expanded; if an attachment cannot be scanned, it will be rejected.

In order for changes to take effect, run:

signal-event email-update

These attributes could result in the rejection of a compressed attachment on a SME server:

  • ArchiveMaxCompressionRatio (default 300)
  • MaxFiles (default 1500)
  • MaxRecursion (default 8)

spamassassin

By default the qpsmtpd 'spamassassin' plugin does not pass any messages over 500,000 bytes to spamassassin for scanning.

To change this behavior:

 db configuration setprop spamassassin MaxMessageSize 2000000 

increases message size to 2,000,000 bytes. Apply the change with

signal-event email-update

Change Horde Webmail Login Page 'Welcome To' Title

The login page for Webmail defaults to "Welcome to Horde Webmail". In order to change this to something like "Welcome to MyDomain Mail"

config setprop horde Name "MyDomain Mail"
signal-event email-update

See also:

Other configurable Horde settings DB_Variables Configuration#Horde_(webmail)

Forum post 31093

Add the admin user as an administrator for Horde

config setprop horde Administration enabled 
signal-event email-update

Large attachments not displaying in webmail

Due to limits set in the PHP configuration it might be that webmail will not display large attachments (see also bugzilla:3990). The following entries are related to the error and can be found in the log files:

/var/log/messages

Mar 13 00:00:12 box1 httpd: PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 154 bytes) in /home/httpd/html/horde/imp/lib/MIME/Contents.php on line 173

/var/log/httpd/error_log

Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 0 bytes)

The default MemoryLimit setting in PHP is set to 32M the value can be changed using the commands below replacing XX with the value you desire.

Important.png Note:
You can set the MemoryLimit any value you like but be sure to add the capital M as a suffix for Megabytes.


db configuration setprop php MemoryLimit XXM
expand-template /etc/php.ini
sv t httpd-e-smith

Disable mail to a user from an external network

However, this seems to only affect /var/qmail/control/badrcptto - denying external delivery to your users but allowing outbound emails: http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=40449.5

Can be either a user, pseudonym or group

db accounts setprop groupname/username/pseudonym Visible internal
signal-event email-update

If you want to remove

db accounts delprop groupname/username/pseudonym Visible
signal-event email-update
  • If you need to restrict emails for all users you can perform this command line
db accounts show | awk -F "="  '/\=user/ {print $1}' |while read USER; do db accounts setprop $USER Visible internal; done
signal-event email-update

If you want to remove

db accounts show | awk -F "="  '/\=user/ {print $1}' |while read USER; do db accounts delprop $USER Visible; done
signal-event email-update
Important.png Note:
Please note that admin and other system accounts can not be hidden from external network this way.

Also note that Pseudonyms can be set to internal only using the server-manager.


I can't receive mail at: user@mail.domain.tld

Add mail.domain.tld as a virtualdomain.

-login to SERVER-MANAGER
-click DOMAINS (on the left)
-click ADD
-type: mail.domain.tld

How do I find out who is logged into webmail and what IP number.

This is logged is in /var/log/messages.

Allow SMTP relay of mail without encryption/authentication

Change the configuration of the system from the default, so that it no longer requires encryption/authentication before allowing relaying of mail.

  • For most case, you really want to allow few specific clients on your LAN or trusted networks, this is done by setting a coma separated list of ip this way (replace IP1, IP2, IP3 by valid ips).
config set qpsmtpd UnauthenticatedRelayClients IP1,IP2,IP3
signal-event email-update
  • In some case you would have a whole dedicated network with appliances needing to send email without auth, this is done this way
db networks setprop {$network} RelayRequiresAuth disabled
signal-event email-update
  • In case you needs are not fulfilled because you need to accommodate a list of remote IP or a sub network of a larger trusted network, you can create a custom template. Here for reference the accepted formats:
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/relayclients
# a subnetwork by only using a prefix of full ip
echo "10.10.0.">>  /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/relayclients/80custom
# an external ip
echo "99.10.1.23" >> /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/relayclients/80custom
# an external network you control
echo "164.163.12.1/30" >> /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/relayclients/80custom
signal-event email-update
  • Disable smtp authentication on all local interfaces as shown in Bugzilla: 6522
config setprop qpsmtpd RelayRequiresAuth disabled
signal-event email-update

SMTP Authentication TLS before Auth disable & enable

Since SME v7.5 the default for SMTP Authentication is 'requires TLS before Auth' to increase security. Where a SME7.4 or earlier server with SMTP & SSMTP authentication enabled has been upgraded, users are now unable to send mail. Users will need to enable TLS or Auto for the Authentication encryption setting in their email clients. Some older email clients and devices do not support TLS.

A fix was released in SME7.5.1 to allow this setting to be disabled (ie revert to SME7.4 functionality). Upgrade to SME7.5.1 before using these commands.

To disable this (AUTH without TLS) & revert to SME7.4 defaults do

config setprop qpsmtpd TlsBeforeAuth 0
signal-event email-update

To change back to the sme7.5 & greater default (AUTH with TLS) do

config setprop qpsmtpd TlsBeforeAuth 1
signal-event email-update

See http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,46218.0.html

http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5997

Internet provider's outgoing port 25 is blocked: How to set an alternative outgoing port for the SMTP server

If your Internet provider is blocking outgoing smtp port 25 on your internet connection but your provider is offering an alternative outgoing port (or when using some relay service) you can simply set this alternative port by adding it to the 'Address of Internet provider's mail server' value in the 'E-mail delivery settings' screen of the server-manager like this:

<internet providers mail server name or ip-address>:<alternative port>

For example: mail.mydomain.com:587

This setting does not alter the incoming smtp mail server port on SME server, which will still use port 25. Refer to a workaround in http://wiki.contribs.org/PortRedirect

How do I enable and configure a disclaimer in email messages

A disclaimer message can be added to the footer of all outgoing email messages.

The message can be the same for all domains or it can be different for all domains.

This functionality is part of sme7.2 release so make sure you have upgraded before doing this.

To create a general disclaimer for all domains on your sme server

config setprop smtpd disclaimer enabled
nano -w /service/qpsmtpd/config/disclaimer

Enter the required disclaimer text

To save & exit

Ctrl o
Ctrl x

To make the changes take effect

signal-event email-update


To create domain specific disclaimers, create seperate domain based disclaimer text files

Delete the general (all domains) disclaimer file if you have already created it

rm  /service/qpsmtpd/config/disclaimer
config setprop smtpd disclaimer enabled
nano -w /service/qpsmtpd/config/disclaimer_domain1.com.au
nano -w /service/qpsmtpd/config/disclaimer_domain2.com
nano -w /service/qpsmtpd/config/disclaimer_domain3.org

Enter the required text in each disclaimer file

To save & exit

Ctrl o
Ctrl x

After making any changes remember to do

signal-event email-update


Note if you only wish to have a disclaimer for some domains, then only create a disclaimer text file for those domains


Note also the criteria for when a disclaimer is attached

(see http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2648)

eg a disclaimer is added to internal to external messages but not internal to internal messages.

To disable the disclaimer function for all domains on your sme server

config setprop smtpd disclaimer disabled
signal-event email-update

Email WBL server manager panel

There is a server-manager contrib to allow GUI control of email white and black lists, detailed in the wiki article: Email_Whitelist-Blacklist_Control.

The panel allows easy configuration of functionality that is built into qmail, qpsmtpd and spamassassin. For more information google for qmail & qpsmtpd, read the spamassassin section in this wiki article and see Email#Default_Plugin_Configuration default qpsmtpd plugin confguration).

There are two main sections, Blacklist and Whitelist, where you can control settings.

Note that there are subtle differences in syntax between whitelist and blacklist entries

Blacklist - Black lists are used for rejecting e-mail traffic

 DNSBL status      - DNSBL is an abbreviation for "DNS blacklist". 
                     It is a list of IP addresses known to be spammers.
 RHSBL status      - RHSBL is an abbreviation for "Right Hand Side Blacklist". 
                     It is a list of domain names known to be spammers.
 qpsmtpd badhelo   - Check a HELO message delivered from a connecting host. 
                     Reject any that appear in badhelo during the 'helo' stage.
 qmail badmailfrom - Check envelope sender addresses. 
                     Reject any that appear (@host or user@host) in badmailfrom during the 'mail'           
                     stage.
 spamassassin blacklist_from - Any envelope sender of a mail (*@host or user@host) matching an 
                               entry in blacklist_from will be rejected by spamassassin.

Whitelists - White lists are used for accepting e-mail traffic

 Whitelists status           - White Lists: ACCEPT
 qpsmtpd whitelisthosts      - Any IP address listed in whitelisthosts will be exempted 
                               from any further validation during the 'connect' stage.
 qpsmtpd whitelisthelo       - Any host that issues a HELO matching an entry in whitelisthelo 
                               will be exempted from further validation during the 'helo' stage.
 qpsmtpd whitelistsenders    - Any envelope sender of a mail (host or user@host) matching an 
                               entry in whitelistsenders will be exempted from further validation
                               during the 'mail' stage.
 spamassassin whitelist_from - Any envelope sender of a mail (*@host or user@host) matching an 
                               entry in whitelist_from will be exempted from spamassassin rejection.

How to block email from one address to another address with check_badmailfromto plugin

Enable the check_badmailfromto plugin. Adapted from this Forum post

This is based heavily on the similar check_badmailfrom, but this plugin references both the FROM: and TO: lines, and if they both are present in the badmailfromto config file (a tab delimited list of FROM/TO pairs), then the message is blocked as if the recipient (TO) didn't exist. This is specifically designed to not give the impression that the sender is blocked (good for cases of harassment).

Prior SME9.2 : qpsmtpd check_badmailfromto plugin

To control mail from external locations to internal locations do

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/plugins
echo "check_badmailfromto" > /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/plugins/31check_badmailfromto
ln -s /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/plugins/31check_badmailfromto /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0/31check_badmailfromto
signal-event email-update

To control mail sent from internal locations to internal locations, in addition to the above also do

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local
ln -s /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/plugins/31check_badmailfromto /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local/31check_badmailfromto
signal-event email-update


Since SME9.2 : qpsmtpd badmailfromto plugin

remove previous templates, if you are updating

rm /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/plugins/31check_badmailfromto \
/etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0/31check_badmailfromto \
/etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local/31check_badmailfromto

To control mail from external locations to internal locations do

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/plugins
echo "badmailfromto" > /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/plugins/31badmailfromto
ln -s /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/plugins/31badmailfromto /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0/31badmailfromto
signal-event email-update

To control mail sent from internal locations to internal locations, in addition to the above also do

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local
ln -s /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/plugins/31badmailfromto /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local/31badmailfromto
signal-event email-update

For Qmail

Create and configure the badmailfromto custom template fragment

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/qmail/control/badmailfromto
nano -w /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/qmail/control/badmailfromto/template-begin

Type in the From and To pairs that you want to stop email delivery for, with a tab between them and a carriage return at the end of the line, with additional pairs on a new line ie

user@bad-domain.com tab user@yourdomain.com enter
user@bad-domain2 tab user2@yourdomain enter

Note also that wildcards or blank spaces are not supported

eg

john@aol.com      mary@yourdomain
bill@yahoo.com      paul@yourdomain.com

then save using

Ctrl o
Ctrl x

Expand the template to update the /var/qmail/control/badmailfromto config file

expand-template /var/qmail/control/badmailfromto

Restart mail services

signal-event email-update

Redirect mail.domain.net to Webmail

Setup external dns records

Add mail.domain.net in Domains panel in server-manager

db domains setprop mail.dom.ain TemplatePath ProxyPassVirtualHosts ProxyPassTarget http://sme.dom.ain/webmail
signal-event remoteaccess-update

where http://sme.dom.ain/webmail is servername.domainname/webmail

E-mail Retrieval

http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:Administration_Manual:Chapter13#E-mail_Retrieval

If your ISP does not provide a custom sort field and you experience the following errors occuring when Multidrop is enabled and the "Select Sort Method (for multi-drop)" is set to Default:

fetchmail: warning: multidrop for pop3.mypopserver.com requires envelope option!
fetchmail: warning: Do not ask for support if all mail goes to postmaster!

and/or

fetchmail: warning: multidrop for my.isp.domain requires envelope option! 
fetchmail: warning: Do not ask for support if all mail goes to postmaster! 


Set "Select Sort Method (for multi-drop) to 'Received' or 'for' As described at bugzilla:5602 bugzilla:6483

Domain Authentication

Warning.png Work in Progress:
trex1512 has marked this page as a Work in Progress. The contents off this page may be in flux, please have a look at this page history the to see list of changes.


Major mail hosting companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) have made domain-authentication mandatory so as to not mark incoming mail as spam.

To facilitate this support for DomainKeys and DKIM signing needs to be enabled in SME's mail subsystem. These techniques require the adding of records in the DNS zone for the user's domain. The DKIM/DK/SPF/SenderID configuration has to be added to your your DNS server / registrar.

How do I remove an email address from the everyone group

By default, all users are automatically added to the user group "everyone". If you would like to remove a user from this group, connect to the server using SSH or locally log in to the server and issue the commands below. Be sure to substitute the name of the user you want to remove for the word username.

db accounts setprop username EveryoneEmail no
signal-event user-modify username


How do I remove an email address from any regular group

By default, all users member of a group "group1" are automatically added as recipients of mail sent to group1@domain. If you would like to remove a user from this group, connect to the server using SSH or locally log in to the server and issue the commands below. Be sure to substitute the name of the user you want to remove for the word username.

db accounts setprop group1 EmailExcludeUsers tom,jack 
signal-event group-modify group1

If you want to prevent all the user members from another group "group2" from receiving emails addressed to group1@domain while they are also member of group1, you could connect to the server using SSH or locally log in to the server and issue the commands below. Be sure to substitute the name of the user you want to remove for the word username.

db accounts setprop group1  EmailExcludeGroups group2
signal-event group-modify group1

All members of the group will still be member for all other purpose (samba access to ibays as an example)

This behaviour is only available as per e-smith-qmail-2.4.0-7.sme see bug #9540

Change the number of logs retained for qpsmtpd and/or sqpsmtpd

The normal retention is 5 logs for both qpsmptd and sqpsmtpd. This may or may not fit all installations. This information is pulled from bugzilla.

Check your config to see if any change has been made to the default log retention rules. Note there are different rules for qpsmtpd and sqpsmtpd. You have to make changes to both as you require.

config show qpsmtpd

If the KeepLogFiles property isn't listed, the default rules apply. Determine how many logs you would like to keep and apply that to the following example. In the command below, 15 is used to keep 15 qpsmtpd logs.

db configuration setprop qpsmtpd KeepLogFiles 15

Restart multilog with the following.

sv t /service/qpsmtpd/log

Check that your setting saved.

ps aux | grep qpsmtpd | grep multi

Look for the line that ends with /var/log/qpsmtpd and verify the number after n equals your KeepLogFiles property from above.

DKIM Setup - qpsmtpd version<0.96

A plugin has been written and is available in SME

To activate it manually follow the steps below, or download a shell script that will do the server based stuff for you & guide you on the DNS stuff setup_dkim.sh:-

Note: I'd recommend reviewing the script first to make sure you're happy to run it on your system

Create a folder:

mkdir /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/dkimkeys/

Then:

cd /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/dkimkeys/
openssl genrsa -out dkim.private 1024
openssl rsa -in dkim.private -pubout -out dkim.public
chown qpsmtpd:qpsmtpd -R /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/dkimkeys/
chmod 0700 dkim.private

For each domain you want to sign:

cp -a dkim.private <fully qualified domain name>.private (less the <> brackets)

Then create a template fragment:

mkdir --parent /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local
echo "dkim_sign keys dkim">/etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local/69dkim_sign
signal-event email-update

Finally propagate your public key "dkim.public" content (<key text>) to your DNS.

Check with your DNS server / registrar. Something similar to the following should work but it varies depending on provider - replace <fully qualified domain name> with your doman details e.g "mydomain.org" (less the <> brackets):

When extracting the key text from the dkim.public file it's on multiple lines. For the key to work for us in the DNS TXT record we need to exclude the header & footer lines & have just the key text as a single line string (the setup_dkim.sh script provides this info in the format required).

default._domainkey.<fully qualified domain name> IN TXT "k=rsa; p=<key text>; t=y"


With Zonedit the following works within your Zone :

Subdomain : default._domainkey

Type : TXT

Text : "v=DKIM1;k=rsa; p=<key text>; t=y"


If you want to customize the signing you can add parameters to the line in /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local/69dkim_sign. Parameters and value are separated by a space only.

  1. keys : "dk" or "domainkeys" for domainkey signature only, "dkim" for DKIM signature only, default "both" (n.b. above template example is dkim ONLY)
  2. dk_method : for domainkey method , default "nofws"
  3. selector : the selector you want, default "default"
  4. algorithm : algorithm for DKIM signing, default "rsa-sha1"
  5. dkim_method : for DKIM, default "relaxed"

NB: key files can not be defined in parameters, they need to be in /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/dkimkeys/{SENDER_DOMAIN}.private


Information.png Tip:
You can verify that your settings are correct by sending an email to check-auth@verifier.port25.com, a free service the purpose of which is to verify if your domain does not contradict mail policies. Please check the answer carefully. See bugzilla:4558#c6


See also : bugzilla:8251 bugzilla:8252

DKIM Setup - qpsmtpd version >= 0.96

Version 0.96 and above supports DKIM natively without the need for extra plugins.

All you have to do is to enable the DKIM signing and promulgate the DNS TXT entries to support it.

Enable the signing:

db configuration setprop qpsmtpd DKIMSigning enabled
signal-event email-update

and then run:

qpsmtpd-print-dns <domain name>

to show the DNS entry(s) required.

Then you have to update your DNS.


Information.png Tip:
You can verify that your settings are correct by sending an email to check-auth@verifier.port25.com, a free service the purpose of which is to verify if your domain does not contradict mail policies. Please check the answer carefully. See bugzilla:4558#c6


also see bugzilla:9694 and https://wikit.firewall-services.com/doku.php/smedev/qpsmtpd_096#documentation

More details are available here

Incoming DKIM checking is also enabled out of the box.


In case you got a problem using the DKIM field provided with your DNS provider /registrar, please first contact them to ensure the problem is not how you try to enter the information. In the likelihood, you got "invalid field" or "too long field" errors and your provider is not able to help you or update its interface, you can generate a shorter DKIM key (with 1024 instead of the default 2048) this way:

cd /home/e-smith/dkim_keys/default
mv private private.long
mv public public.long
openssl genrsa -out private 1024
openssl rsa -in private -pubout -out public
chown qpsmtpd:qpsmtpd private
chown root:qpsmtpd public
chmod 0400 private
signal-event email-update
qpsmtpd-print-dns

Outbound DKIM signing / SPF / DMARC policy FOR MULTIPLE DOMAINS

The default DKIM key is created in /home/e-smith/dkim_keys/default. To enable DKIM signing for all the domains that you manage:

db configuration setprop qpsmtpd DKIMSigning enabled 
signal-event email-update

If you want to disable dkim signing for a domain, you can use:

db domains setprop domain.com DKIMSigning disabled 
signal-event email-update

The default behavior is to use the same key pair for all your domains. But you can create other key pairs for specific domain if you want. For example, if you want to use a specific key pair for the domain.net domain:

cd /home/e-smith/dkim_keys 
mkdir domain.net 
cd domain.net 
echo default > selector 
openssl genrsa -out private 2048 
openssl rsa -in private -out public -pubout 
chown qpsmtpd:qpsmtpd private 
chmod 400 private 
signal-event email-update

Now, the emails using a domain.net sender address will be signed by this new key instead of the default one.

Domain Keys

There is a plugin to check incoming mail has been signed

Please read here for more details : http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4569


Warning.png Warning:
There is a plugin for signing with DomainKeys but it is not installed by default. It has not been tested on Koozali SME Server:

http://wiki.qpsmtpd.org/doku.php?id=plugins:spam:domainkeys_sign


Other information

DomainKeys seem to be deprecated in favour of DKIM.

The DomainKeys plugin only CHECKS incoming email. Spamassassin checks for DKIM.

Temporary_error_on_maildir_delivery

In certains cases you have some mailboxes which can't delivery messages and the qmail log say:

deferral: Temporary_error_on_maildir_delivery._(#4.3.0)/

It is probably that your users want to go beyond the upper limit of their quota, so you have to increase it. This could solve their problems.

External Access

Allow external IMAP mail access

There was a deliberate decision to remove non-SSL protected username/password services from the external interface.


Warning.png Warning:
Keep in mind that your passwords, your data won't be protected and will be in clear text over Internet


to allow unsecure IMAP access

config setprop imap access public
signal-event email-update

But before you do this try to use secure IMAP (IMAPS or imap over ssl) with port 993

POP3 & webmail HTTP

I want to set my SMESERVER to allow POP3 (or webmail HTTP) but it's not an option, I only see POP3S (or webmail HTTPS).

The SMESERVER is secure by design. POP3 (or webmail HTTP) is viewed as inadequate security and removed as an option from a standard installation to encourage unknowing administrators to select the 'best practice' option -a secure connection with POP3S, IMAPS, or HTTPS.

Warning.png Warning:
Keep in mind that your passwords, your data won't be protected and will be in clear text over Internet


You can still set your SMESERVER to allow POP3 settings by:

config setprop pop3 access public
signal-event email-update

Allow external pop3 access

Email settings > POP3 server access in SME 7.1 server-manager allows only pop3s protocol for clients outside the LAN. Some email clients (eg The Bat! v3.98.4) won't allow pop3s connections to SME 7.1 because of ssl version conflict. Until this is sorted out, a workaround is to hack SME to allow regular pop3 on the external interface using the following commands.

Warning.png Warning:
Keep in mind that your passwords, your data won't be protected and will be in clear text over Internet


config setprop pop3 access public
signal-event email-update
svc -t /service/pop3s  

more information bugzilla:2620

Imap

Folders with a dot in name

Email folder names that have a period ('.') in the folder name, will be split into sub-folders. e.g. folder name 'www.contribs.org' is created as

www
  contribs
        org

Dovecot Idle_Notify

Poor battery consumption issues has been reported with K9-mail on recent Android systems. It is apparent one way of helping this is to modify the imap_idle_notify setting. The default is in Dovecot, and therefore on SME is 2 minutes.

K9 has an idle refresh of 24 mins but it seems with Dovecot defaults at 2 mins it causes lots of wake ups and battery drain.

This is configurable via a config db property.

Default on install

# config show dovecot
 dovecot=service
   Quotas=enabled
   status=enabled

Set dovecot Idle_Notify to 20 minutes

# config setprop dovecot Idle_Notify 20
# config show dovecot
 dovecot=service
   Idle_Notify=20
   Quotas=enabled
   status=enabled

Expand template to update *.conf (can also issue a full reconfigure/reboot)

# expand-template /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# dovecot -a |grep imap_idle_notify_interval
  imap_idle_notify_interval = 20 mins

qpsmtpd

SME uses the qpsmtpd smtp daemon.

Official Description

qpsmtpd is a flexible smtpd daemon written in Perl. Apart from the core SMTP features, all functionality is implemented in small "extension plugins" using the easy to use object oriented plugin API.

qpsmtpd was originally written as a drop-in qmail-smtpd replacement, but now it also includes smtp forward, postfix, exim and maildir "backends".

qpsmtpd wiki: http://wiki.qpsmtpd.org

Log watching tool

qplogtail is a script to to monitor /var/log/qpsmtpd/current, see bugzilla:3418

Qpsmtpd for SME versions 9.1 and earlier

Warning.png Warning:
Please note that the version of qpsmtpd has been upgraded for SME version 9.2 and later to qpsptpd version 0.96. This change has resulted in a lot of changes to the way it works, the plugins (and their names!) and the corresponding database entries, so this section ONLY applies to SME Version 9.1 and earlier, except where the plugin has been retained, See the next section for the new details.


Default Plugin Configuration

SME uses the following qpsmtpd plugins to evaluate each incoming email.

SME maintains 2 distinct configurations: one for the 'local' networks (as defined in server-manager::Security::Local networks) and another for 'remote' networks (everyone else).

The default configuration of each plugin is indicated in the 'Default Status' column.

Plugin Purpose Default Status
hosts_allow Prohibit more than "InstancesPerIP" connections from any single host (change with 'config setprop smtpd InstancesPerIP'). Allow or deny connections according to the contents of /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/hosts_allow. See hosts_allow SVN code for more details. enabled
peers Allow different plugin configuration based on the sending computer's IP address. By default SME maintains different configurations for the local networks (in /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/local) and for everyone else (in /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/peers/0) enabled
logging/logterse Allow greater logging detail using smaller log files. Optionally supports qplogsumm.pl to compile qpsmtpd statistics. enabled
auth/auth_cvm_unix_local Allow authenticated smtp relay enabled (remote)
disabled (local)
check_earlytalker reject email from servers that talk out of turn enabled (remote)
disabled (local)
count_unrecognized_commands reject email from servers that issue X invalid commands enabled (remote)
disabled (local)
bcc bcc all email to a specific address for archiving disabled
check_relay Check to see if relaying is allowed (in case the recipient is not listed in one of SME's local domains) enabled
check_norelay Check to see if the sending server is specifically forbidden to relay through us. enabled
require_resolvable_fromhost Check that the domain listed in the sender's email address is resolvable enabled (remote)
disabled (local)
check_basicheaders reject email that lacks either a From: or Date: header enabled
rhsbl Reject email if the sender's email domain has a reputation for disregarding smtp RFCs. disabled
(always disabled for local connections)
dnsbl Reject email from hosts listed in your configured dnsbl servers disabled
check_badmailfrom Reject email where the sender address is listed in /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/badmailfrom enabled
check_badrcptto_patterns Reject email addressed to any address matching an expression listed in /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/badrcptto_patterns enabled
check_badrcptto Reject email addressed to any address listed in /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/badrcptto enabled
check_spamhelo Reject email from hosts that say 'helo ...' using a value in /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/badhelo enabled
check_smtp_forward If config show DelegateMailServer or db domains show <domainname> MailServer is set (telling SME to deliver email for all domains or just <domainname> to another server), check_smtp_forward will connect to the specified server and will reject the message outright if the internal mail server would also reject it. disabled
unless an internal mail server is configured.
check_goodrcptto Accept email only if the recipient address matches an entry in /var/service/qpsmtpd/config/goodrcptto. For domains that are configured to use an internal mail server, the entire domain name will be added to .../goodrcptto. enabled
rcpt_ok Return 'OK' if none of the other host checks has returned 'DENY' (??) enabled
pattern_filter Reject email according to content patterns (??) disabled
tnef2mime Convert MS TNEF (winmail.dat) and uuencoded attachments to MIME enabled
disclaimer Add a configurable disclaimer to email messages disabled
spamassassin Check email using spamassassin, and optionally reject it completely if the score exceeds a configurable value. disabled
(always disabled for local connections)
virus/clamav Scan incoming email with ClamAV enabled
queue/qmail-queue Deliver the incoming message to qmail for delivery. enabled

Qpsmtpd for SME versions 9.2 and Later

Warning.png Warning:
Please note that the version of qpsmtpd has been upgraded for SME version 9.2 and later to qpsmtpd version 0.96. This change has resulted in a lot of changes to the way it works, the plugins (and their names!) and the corresponding database entries, so this section ONLY applies to SME Version 9.2 and later version, see the previous section for the details.


This section has been taken from the notes prepared by the dev who made the changes, the wiki is here.

Here is a list of the plugins in use, and a note of any changes that might have occurred:

  • logterse: no change
  • tls: no change
  • auth_cvm_unix_local: no change
  • check_earlytalker: renamed earlytalker
  • count_unrecognized_commands: no change
  • bcc: no change
  • check_relay: renamed relay
  • check_norelay: merged into the relay plugin
  • require_resolvable_fromhost: renamed resolvable_fromhost
  • check_basicheaders: renamed headers
  • rhsbl: no change
  • dnsbl: no change
  • check_badmailfrom: renamed badmailfrom
  • check_badrcptto_patterns: doesn't exist anymore, merged with badrcptto
  • check_badrcptto: renamed badrcptto
  • check_spamhelo: renamed helo
  • check_smtp_forward: no change
  • check_goodrcptto: no change
  • rcpt_ok: no change
  • pattern_filter: no change
  • tnef2mime: no change
  • spamassassin: no change
  • clamav: no change
  • qmail-queue: no change

Here is a section for each of the new plugins which are installed by default. The ones that have not changed are documented above.

Karma

The karma plugin tracks sender history. For each inbound email, various plugins can raise, or lower the "naughtiness" of the connection (eg, if SPF check passes, if the message is spammy etc...). For each host sending us email, the total number of connections, and the number of good and bad connections is recorded in a database. If a host as more bad than good connections in its history, emails will be rejected for 1 day. 3 settings are available for this plugin:

  • Karma (enabled|disabled): Default value is disabled. Change to enabled to use the plugin
  • KarmaNegative (integer): Default value is 2.
    It's the delta between good and bad connection to consider the host naughty enough to block it for 1 day.
    Eg, with a default value of two, a host can be considered naughty if it sent you 8 good emails and 10 bad ones
  • KarmaStrikes (integer): Default value is 3. This is the threshold for a single email to be considered good or bad.
    Eg, with the default value of 3, an email needs at least 3 bad karmas (reaches -3) for the connection to be considered bad.
    On the other side, 3 good karmas are needed for the connection to be considered good. Between the two, the connection is considered neutral
    and won't be used in the history count

Example:

db configuration setprop qpsmtpd Karma enabled KarmaNegative 3
signal-event email-update


URIBL

The URIBL plugin works a bit like RHSBL, except that it checks domain names found in the body of the email. For each URI identified, the corresponding domain name can be submitted to a BL list (through DNS queries). Two settings are available:

  • URIBL (enabled|disabled): Default is disabled. Set this to enabled to use the plugin
  • UBLList: (Comma separated list addresses): Default value is multi.surbl.org:8-16-64-128,black.uribl.com,rhsbl.sorbs.net.
    This can be the same as RBLList. You can also set bitmask to use for combined lists (in the default value, the bitmask is 8-16-64-128)


Example:

db configuration setprop qpsmtpd URIBL enabled UBLList multi.surbl.org,black.uribl.com
signal-event email-update


Helo

Previously, the helo plugin was just checking for some known bad helo hostnames used by spammers (aol.com and yahoo.com). Now, it can check much more than that. This plugin is always enabled and has a single setting:

  • HeloPolicy: (lenient|rfc|strict). The default value is lenient.

See https://github.com/smtpd/qpsmtpd/blob/master/plugins/helo for a description of the various tests done at each level

Example:

db configuration setprop qpsmtpd HeloPolicy rfc
signal-event email-update

Inbound DKIM / SPF / DMARC

DMARC is a policy on top of DKIM and SPF. By default, SPF and DKIM are now checked on every inbound emails, but no reject is attempted. The dmarc plugin can decide to reject the email (depending on the sender policy). dkim and spf plugins are always enabled. dmarc has two settings:

  • DMARCReject (enabled|disabled): Default value is disabled.
    If set to enabled, the dmarc plugin can decide to reject an email (if the policy of the sender is to reject on alignment failure)
  • DMARCReporting (enabled|disabled): Default value is enabled.
    If set to enabled, enable reporting (which is the r in dmarc). Reporting is a very important part of the DMARC standard.
    When enabled, you'll record information about email you receive from domains which have published a DMARC policy in a local
    SQLite database (/var/lib/qpsmtpd/dmarc/reports.sqlite).
    Then, once a day, you send the aggregate reports to the domain owner so they have feedback.
    You can set this to disabled if you want to disable this feature
  • SPFRejectPolicy (0|1|2|3|4): Default value is 0. Set the policy to apply in case of SPF failure when the sender hasn't published a DMARC policy.
    Note: this is only used when no DMARC policy is published by the sender.
    If there's a DMARC policy, even a "p=none" one (meaning no reject), then the email won't be rejected, even on failed SPF tests.
  • 0: do not reject anything
  • 1: reject when SPF says fail
  • 2: reject when SPF says softfail
  • 3: reject when SPF says neutral
  • 4: reject when an error occurred (like a syntax error in SPF entry) or if no SPF entry is published
  • Inbound DKIM checks are only used by DMARC. No reject solely based on DKIM is supported

Example:

db configuration setprop qpsmtpd DMARCReject disabled SPFRejectPolicy 2
signal-event email-update

Outbound DKIM signing / SPF / DMARC policy

Everything is now ready for you to sign your outbound emails, and publish your public key, as well as your SPF and DMARC policy. A default DKIM key is created in /home/e-smith/dkim_keys/default. To enable DKIM signing for all the domain you manage:

db configuration setprop qpsmtpd DKIMSigning enabled
signal-event email-update

If you want to disable dkim signing for a domain, you can use:

db domains setprop domain.com DKIMSigning disabled
signal-event email-update

The default behavior is to use the same key pair for all your domains. But you can create other key pairs for specific domain if you want. For example, if you want to use a specific key pair for the domain.net domain:

cd /home/e-smith/dkim_keys
mkdir domain.net
cd domain.net
echo default > selector
openssl genrsa -out private 2048
openssl rsa -in private -out public -pubout
chown qpsmtpd:qpsmtpd private
chmod 400 private
signal-event email-update

Now, the emails using a domain.net sender address will be signed by this new key instead of the default one.

Publishing your DNS entries

Signing your outbound emails is just part of the process. You now need to publish some DNS entries so everyone can check if the email they receive matches your policy. This part is not to be done on your SME Server, but on your public DNS provider. A script helps you by creating some sample DNS entries already formatted for a bind-like zone file. To use it:

qpsmtpd-print-dns <domain name>

If omitted, the primary domain name is assumed.

Example output:

Here are sample DNS entries you should add in your public DNS
The DKIM entry can be copied as is, but others will probably need to be adjusted
to your need. For example, you should either change the reporting email adress
for DMARC (or create the needed pseudonym)


default._domainkey IN TXT "v=DKIM1; p=MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAs/Qq3Ntpx2QNdRxGKMeKc2r9ULvyYW633IbLivHznN9JvjJIbS54PGIEk3sSxvZSdpTRAvYlxn/nRi329VmcDK0vJYb2ut2rnZ3VO3r5srm+XEvTNPxij5eU4gqw+5ayySDjqzAMEMc5V7lUMpZ/YiqnscA075XiMF7iEq8Quv1y0LokmgwtxzOXEZap34WXlKyhYzH+D""fabF6SUllmA0ovODNvudzvEOanPlViQ7q7d+Mc3b7X/fzgJfh5P9f5U+iSmzgyGctSb6GX8sqsDMNVEsRZpSE3jd2Z33RDWyW21PGOKB/ZrLiliKfdJbd3Wo7AN7bWsZpQsei2Hsv1niQIDAQAB"
@ IN SPF "v=spf1 mx a -all"
@ IN TXT "v=spf1 mx a -all"
_dmarc IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=none; adkim=s; aspf=r; rua=mailto:dmarc-feedback@domain.net; pct=100"

All you have to do now is publish those records, but do note that there is a point to consider when publishing the default._domainkey DNS record, as produced by the qpsmtpd-print-dns command: if the DNS record includes ;t=y then as per the DKIM specification (RFC4781 section 3.6.1) this means that your "...domain is testing DKIM. Verifiers MUST NOT treat messages from signers in testing mode differently from unsigned email, even should the signature fail to verify. Verifiers MAY wish to track testing mode results to assist the signer."

On the other hand, if no ;t=y is included, then it means you are intending to use DKIM in production mode. It might be a good idea to publish the DKIM DNS record first in testing mode (;t=y included), check how things go and if everything is alright, remove the ;t=y part.


Testing

You can install spfquery:

yum --enablerepo=epel install libspf2 libspf2-progs

Usage (try -help for help):

spfquery -ip=11.22.33.44 -sender=user@aol.com -helo=spammer.tld

Check record via dig

dig -t TXT +short somedomain.co.uk

Load

The loadcheck plugin can temporarily deny inbound emails if your server is overloaded. This plugin is always enabled and has a single setting:

  • MaxLoad (int number): Default is 7. If your load is above this value, emails from the outside will be deferred.

Other QPSMTPD Plugins

The following qpsmtpd plugins will work on a SME server, but are either not included or are not configured by default.

Plugin Purpose Default Status
connection_time Track the total time for each qpsmtpd connection from 'Accepted connection' through 'click, disconnecting', and output the results to the qpsmtpd log file. not installed - not clear if this works for SME9.2 (anyone?)
GeoIP Track the geographic origin of incoming email and optionally reject email from specified countries not installed - does work for SME 9.2 and later.

Internal or External Mail Servers

SME can be configured as a spam and antivirus filter for one or more "Internal or External" mail servers on a domain-by-domain basis. The mail server specified does not have to be on the same local network as your SME server, & can be hosted on an external site.

Deliver ALL email to a single internal or external mail server

You can set the default delivery location for all domains on your SME server to a single internal or external mail server by setting the mail server address in server-manager::Configuration::E-mail::Change e-mail delivery settings::Address of internal mail server.

Note: Address of internal mail server must be blank if you want any email delivered to the SME server itself.

Deliver email for one domain to an internal or external mail server

You can override the default email delivery destination for individual domains on your SME server (forwarding all email for the specified domain to another server) as follows:

First, create the necessary virtual domains using server-manager::Configuration::Domains::Add Domain.

Then, (assuming your domain is called test.com and the actual mail server is at a.b.c.d issue the following commands:

db domains setprop test.com MailServer a.b.c.d
signal-event email-update

A FQDN can also be used for the MailServer property, eg aspmx.l.google.com instead of the IP address a.b.c.d

db domains setprop test.com MailServer aspmx.l.google.com
signal-event email-update


Remove the internal or external mail server (and return email delivery for test.com to the default for your SME server) using:

db domains delprop test.com MailServer
signal-event email-update

Secondary/Backup Mail Server Considerations

Many people misunderstand the issues of using a secondary or backup mail server (backup MX) to hold your mail before it gets delivered to your SME Server. If you consider putting a backup mail server in place because you are concerned about lost mail because your internet connection may occasionally drop out, think again and consider the issues discussed below.

What is Backup MX

A backup MX is a system whereby through your DNS records you tell other servers on the internet that in order to deliver mail to your domain they first need to try the primary MX record and if they fail to connect they can try to connect to one or more of your listed backup or secondary mail servers. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MX_record

The process of delivering email to your SME Server

So lets look at how mail gets delivered without and with a backup mx when your Internet link, ISP or server is down.

Without a backup MX

  • The sending mail server cannot connect to your server.
  • The sending mail server MUST queue the mail and try again later.
  • The mail stays on the sender's server.
  • The sender's server resends the mail at a later date.

The requirement to re-queue is a fundamental part of the SMTP protocol - it is not optional. So, if your server is offline due to a link or ISP outage, the mail just stays at the sender's server until you are once again reachable.

With a backup MX

  • The sending mail server cannot contact your server.
  • The sending mail server sends the mail to your secondary MX.
  • The secondary MX queues the mail until your link/server is up.
  • The mail is queued on an untrusted third-party mail server (think about confidential mail between your company and some business partner).
  • The sending mail server's administrator thinks it has been delivered, according to their logs.
  • You have no, or little, visibility over the queued mail.
  • When your link comes up, the secondary MX sends the mail on to your server.
  • You have added more hops, more systems and more delay to the process.

If you think that a backup MX will protect against broken mail servers which don't re-queue, you can't. Those servers will drop mail on the floor at random times, for example when their Internet link is down.

Those servers are also highly likely to never try your backup MX.

Thankfully those servers are mostly gone from the Internet, but adding a secondary MX doesn't really improve the chances that they won't drop mail destined for your server on the floor.

Backup MX and SPAM Filtering

On top of the issue, indicated above, there is another issue to consider and that is what happens with SPAM due to the use of a Backup MX.

Your SME Server takes care of filtering a lot of SPAM by checking on the full username & domain at the time it is received.

For example if your server hosts example.com and someone sends mail to joeuser@example.com, the server will only accept the mail if joeuser is a local user/alias/group/pseudonym on the server. Otherwise, the mail is rejected during the SMTP transaction.

A backup mail server however, generally does not have a full list of users against which it can check if it should accept the mail for the given domain. Hence it will accept mail for invalid users.

So:

  • If you trust the secondary MX, you will accept a lot of SPAM when the link comes up.
  • If you don't trust it, you will cause a lot of SPAM backscatter as the mail has been accepted at the secondary MX and then later bounced by you.
  • Stopping backscatter is why SME Server rejects invalid addresses during the initial SMTP transaction.

The SPAM backscatter can only be stopped if the secondary MX has a full list of users for your domain to allow filtering to occur.

But:

  • You need to be able to configure this secondary MX with such user/domain lists
  • You need to maintain these secondary configurations when users are added/deleted from your primary server configuration
  • You need to test (regularly) if the secondary is successfully accepting/rejecting mail as required.

Quite a few sites have lost lots of mail through misconfigured backup MX servers. Unfortunately, the time when you find out they are misconfigured is when you go to use them, and then you find that the backup MX has changed configuration and bounced all of your mail.

Then you realise that this mail could have queued at the sender's site if there hadn't been a broken secondary MX bouncing the mail for you.

  • If you bounce mail at your server, you have logs to show what's wrong.
  • If your secondary MX bounces your mail, you usually have no way to determine what happened other than via reports from the original senders that your mail bounced.

Summary

In summary, if your server/Internet connection is available most (let's say >90%) of the time, you are generally better off without a secondary MX.

If your server/link is down more than this (e.g. dialup), you should not be delivering mail directly to your server.

If you still want to consider setting up a seconday MX, ensure that:

  • you have fully control of the configuration of each of the email gateways for your domain
  • each gateway can make decisions on whether to accept/reject mail for the users at the domain

Mail server on dynamic IP

Problems with running a mail server on SME server using a dynamic external IP from ISP

This information comes from http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2057#c10

This is the chronological sequence of events that leads to issues with mail servers on dynamic IPs:

1) Server gets dynamic IP

2) Reboot/power fail (without updating dynamic DNS to "offline")

3) Another server/someone else is allocated your old IP while your server is down

4) The other server/person is running a mail server

5) The other server either gets your mail (which is bad) or bounces your mail (also bad)

You have no control over this issue and you will lose mail when it happens. If you have a dynamic IP, the recommended approach is to get someone with a static IP to queue your inbound mail and send it to you on a non-standard port, preferably with an authentication mechanism which queues the mail if the auth fails, just in case someone else happens to have a mail server on the same port (while highly unlikely, this is possible).

Whether this issue is really a problem to end users, depends on how much you "value" your mail. For a home user having their own mail server, it is probably not a great problem if some messages should happen to go astray, but for all other classes of users, you should really avoid running a mail server on a dynamic IP, without implementing a suitable queueing workaround as suggested. Some ISPs change the IP very infrequently eg yearly, so in those cases it is also not a significant problem. Many/most ISP's will issue a new IP every time a connection is lost & re-established, so these situations are more problematic.

How to re-apply procmail rules

If you have a folder of email that needs to have the procmail rules applied, then the trick is to be logged in as the email user, and then position your self in the home directory, and then this works:

su <username> -s /bin/bash 
cd ~
for m in <fullpath to maildirectory>/cur/*; do echo $m; procmail < $m && rm $m; done


Overview

The goal of the IPP2P project is to identify peer-to-peer (P2P) data in IP traffic.

It appears the ipp2p project may now be defunct (at February 2010), although the maintainer of the smeserver-ipp2p packages is still releasing updates for each SME server kernel upgrade (as at May 2012 for SME 7.6.x).


Important.png Note:
The packages for this contrib must be recompiled for each released version of SME server and the corresponding kernel (and kernel mod) version.

See this Forum thread for information regarding the current release status http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,43669.0.html

Also see Bugzilla:38 for information regarding development & maintenance.


Installation

The rpms are currently located here

http://jeremielorente.free.fr/linux/sme/contribs/ipp2p/

Please manually check the latest released rpm version numbers, and use those version numbers in the commands below.

To download do

mkdir -p /temp/ipp2p
cd /temp/ipp2p
wget http://jeremielorente.free.fr/linux/sme/contribs/ipp2p/smeserver-ipp2p-1.0-2.el4.sme.noarch.rpm
wget http://jeremielorente.free.fr/linux/sme/contribs/ipp2p/ipp2p-0.8.2-4.el4.sme.i686.rpm
wget http://jeremielorente.free.fr/linux/sme/contribs/ipp2p/kmod-ipp2p-0.8.2-1.2.6.9_103.EL.i686.rpm
wget http://jeremielorente.free.fr/linux/sme/contribs/ipp2p/kmod-ipp2p-smp-0.8.2-1.2.6.9_103.EL.i686.rpm

If required, download and install the hugemem kmod module

wget http://jeremielorente.free.fr/linux/sme/contribs/ipp2p/kmod-ipp2p-hugemem-0.8.2-1.2.6.9_103.EL.i686.rpm

Install the rpms

cd /temp/ipp2p
yum localinstall *.rpm

Configuration

Enabling

set configuration values for various networks
The default is disabled, ie no blocking of p2p
bit = bittorrent and ipp2p = are the common protocols, the others are less common and not as well tested.

config setprop ipp2p apple enabled
config setprop ipp2p bit enabled
config setprop ipp2p ares enabled 
config setprop ipp2p ipp2p enabled
config setprop ipp2p soul enabled 
config setprop ipp2p winmx enabled 

check settings are correct

config show ipp2p

apply changes and restart server

signal-event remoteaccess-update

Disabling

To disable blocking setprop to disabled

config setprop ipp2p apple disabled
config setprop ipp2p bit disabled
config setprop ipp2p ares disabled 
config setprop ipp2p ipp2p disabled
config setprop ipp2p soul disabled 
config setprop ipp2p winmx disabled

apply changes and restart server

signal-event remoteaccess-update

Uninstallation

yum remove smeserver-ipp2p

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Thank you!

The server manager is the GUI front end for the firewall. The firewall is modified automatically in response to changes you make in the configuration, such as enabling/disabling services, marking them public/private, forwarding ports, etc.

If you wish to make changes beyond those provided for by the server manager, you can do so by setting DB records or providing custom templates. Only make these changes if you are sure you know what you are doing, incorrect settings will compromise security on your server.

FAQs

  • I want to have two WAN addresses; one for the SMESERVER and another that needs to be treated like a "Local Network". I can't set any address from the WAN subnet as a "Local Network".

This is intended behaviour as SMESERVER is secure by design. If you need to do something like this, you should know what you are doing and understand what to poke under the covers.

DB Settings

  • How do I allow public access to a service I've added to SME Server?

For this example the service you have installed is called 'manta' and 'nnn' is the TCP port number that needs to be opened. Watch your capitalization with the command below:

 config set manta service access public status enabled TCPPort nnn

For UDP services, use UDPPort instead of TCPPort.

If you need to open multiple ports for one service you can use TCPPorts and UDPPorts. Port numbers are seperated with a comma, but without a space. Note that ranges of ports are defined with a : between the numbers in this case, instead of a -.

Note that you can also set restrictions with AllowHosts and DenyHosts:

 config setprop manta AllowHosts 1.2.3.4,10.11.12.0/24 
 config setprop manta DenyHosts 16.17.18.18
 

Then, to activate, do:

 signal-event remoteaccess-update
  • I want to block traffic from some ip-addresses to my server on some port.
config setprop httpd-e-smith DenyHosts a.b.c.d,w.x.y.z
signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot

Additional information on customizing iptables

Create a custom-named service definition in the configuration database. you can see the DB configuration

db configuration set <servicename> service

Apply your desired firewall restrictions to any existing SME 'service' or to a custom-named service that you have created. Combine a custom-named service with port-forwarding to create customized firewall rules.

db configuration setprop <servicename> TCPPort <portnumber>
db configuration setprop <servicename> TCPPorts <portnumbers>
db configuration setprop <servicename> UDPPort <portnumber>
db configuration setprop <servicename> UDPPorts <portnumbers>
db configuration setprop <servicename> status enabled|disabled
db configuration setprop <servicename> access public|private
db configuration setprop <servicename> AllowHosts a.b.c.d,x.y.z.0/24
db configuration setprop <servicename> DenyHosts e.f.g.h,l.m.n.0/24

Effectuate the changes you have made

signal-event remoteaccess-update
Affected file: /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
Variable Target Default Expected values
TCPPort --proto tcp --dport <Ports> Pre-configured for default services; no default for custom services empty or a numerical or coma separated numbers
TCPPorts --proto tcp --dports <Ports> No default for custom services; Ranges of ports are defined with a : not a - empty or a numerical or coma separated numbers
UDPPort --proto udp --dport <Ports> Pre-configured for default services; no default for custom services empty or a numerical or coma separated numbers
UDPPorts --proto udp --dports <Ports> No default for custom services; Ranges of ports are defined with a : not a - empty or a numerical or coma separated numbers
status disabled AllowHosts is set to "" (an empty string) unless the status is 'enabled' 'enabled' or 'disabled'
access private AllowHosts is set to "" (an empty string) unless access is 'public' 'private' for localhost and local network only (Server and gateway mode), 'public' for everywhere, 'localhost' for localhost only
AllowHosts --src ..... --jump ACCEPT Pre-configured for default services; no default for custom services. Default is '0.0.0.0/0' if service is enabled and public. IP and netmask with this format 0.0.0.0/0, or coma separated list of these elements
DenyHosts --src ..... --jump denylog Pre-configured for default services; no default for custom services. If 'DenyHosts' is empty or does not exist then there are no '... --jump denylog' entries created in /etc/init.d/masq. IP and netmask with this format 0.0.0.0/0, or coma separated list of these elements

Custom templates

Block incoming IP address

  • I want to block All traffic from some ip-addresses to my server.

Manual Method

Create a custom template and list the IP's

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/rc.d/init.d/masq/
nano -w /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/rc.d/init.d/masq/40DenyRiffRaff

Now add the IP's you wish to block to the newly create file in the following format.

/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 69.212.12.76/32 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 88.28.215.11/32 -j DROP

expand and restart

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
/etc/init.d/masq restart
  

To check the new block use the following command and look for the IP address you just DROP'ed. It should be listed in the "source" column.

 iptables -L INPUT -v -n

Automated method

The above can be automated slightly.

First lets create a key where we can add IPs that we want to block:

config set ipblock configuration status enabled DenyHosts 208.100.26.0/24 logging disabled

As above, create the following template:

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/rc.d/init.d/masq/
nano -w /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/rc.d/init.d/masq/40DenyRiffRaff

Paste this code:

{
   use esmith::ConfigDB;
   my $db = esmith::ConfigDB->open_ro
       || die 'Could not open configuration database';
   # Completely block any riff raff
   if ( ( my $status = $db->get_prop( 'ipblock', 'status' ) ) eq 'enabled' )
   {
       my $DenyHosts = $db->get_prop( 'ipblock', 'DenyHosts' ) ||  '';
       if ( $DenyHosts ne  '' ) {
           my $logging = $db->get_prop( 'ipblock', 'logging' ) || 'disabled';
           foreach my $host ( split( ',', $DenyHosts ) ) {
               $OUT .= "\n";
               $OUT .= "# Simple ipblock for riff raff\n\n";
               if ( $logging eq 'enabled' ) {
                   $OUT .= "/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s $host -j denylog\n";
               }
               else {
                   $OUT .= "/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s $host -j DROP\n";
               }
           }
           $OUT .= "\n";
       }
       else {
           $OUT .= "# ipblock no DenyHosts set\n";
       }
   }
   else {
       $OUT .= "# ipblock disabled\n";
   }
}

You can add multiple addresses separated by commas:

config setprop ipblock DenyHosts 208.100.26.0/24,1.2.3.4,5.6.0.0/16

You can disable this blocking with:

config setprop ipblock status disabled

If you want to log the dropped packets rather than just drop them:

config setprop ipblock logging enabled

Then expand and restart your firewall:

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
/etc/init.d/masq restart

Block outgoing IPs or mac addresses

This section needs improvement.

See this forum post for clues re doing this, based in part on the concept of blocking incming traffic from specific external IPs.

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,46036.0/all.html

Formulation of suitable iptables rules will be required, use

man iptables

The template fragment needs to be placed in the right order, so that other rules do not negate the rule eg

20blockIP

Example: To block access based on the mac address of the NIC of the wokstation (not on IP)

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/rc.d/init.d/masq/
pico -w /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/rc.d/init.d/masq/20Blockmac

Add the following code to the fragment and save

/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -m mac --mac-source XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX -j DROP

(Replace XX.XX.XX.XX.XX.XX with actual mac address)

expand-template /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
/etc/init.d/masq restart

Check that blocking works as expected

To see the iptables that are in effect on your server, issue the command

iptables --list

or

iptables -L

Block outgoing ports

  • I want to block outgoing traffic from my server.

These commands are based on http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2977

Please check for the latest attachments (custom template fragments) to this bug.

At present, traffic is only blocked if it originates on the primary local network. No processing is performed on traffic addressed to the LAN IP, WAN IP or loopback address of the SME.

Download custom templates and configure ports with db command

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
wget -O 91adjustPortBlocks http://bugs.contribs.org/attachment.cgi?id=1395
wget -O 42SetupPortBlocks http://bugs.contribs.org/attachment.cgi?id=1389

Create desired db entries to suit the ports & protocols you want to block

config setprop masq TCPBlocks address:port
config setprop masq UDPBlocks address:port

eg to block all outbound traffic except that passed by the smtp & httpd proxies

config setprop masq TCPBlocks 0.0.0.0/0:1-65535
config setprop masq UDPBlocks 0.0.0.0/0:1-65535

eg to leave open some ports ie 222 & 2000-2010, block in ranges

config setprop masq TCPBlocks 0.0.0.0/0:1-221,0.0.0.0/0:223-1999,0.0.0.0/0:2011-65535

Update the config changes and restart masq

signal-event remoteaccess-update
/etc/init.d/masq restart

Bypass Proxy

  • You have Transparent Proxy enabled (the default) but want to allow this to be selectively bypassed.

These commands are based on http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2374

Please check for the latest attachments (custom template fragments) to this bug.

Download custom templates and configure ports with db command

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
wget -O 35transproxy http://bugs.contribs.org/attachment.cgi?id=1410
wget -O 90adjustTransProxy http://bugs.contribs.org/attachment.cgi?id=2178

Create desired db entries for the clients or sites you want to allow

config setprop squid BypassProxyTo   162.23.23.125
config setprop squid BypassProxyFrom a.b.c.d,x.y.z.0/0
expand-template /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
/etc/init.d/masq restart

If the setting changes do not appear to take effect, do the following

signal-event reboot

To add a BypassProxyFrom IP & retain existing IPs without re-entering them, do the following

config setprop squid BypassProxyFrom a.b.c.d,$(config getprop squid BypassProxyFrom)
expand-template /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
/etc/init.d/masq restart

Followed if necessary by

signal-event reboot

To remove a specific entry but leave other existing entries unchanged

config setprop squid BypassProxyFrom \
$(config getprop squid BypassProxyFrom | \
sed -e 's/entry-to-be-removed//' -e 's/^,//' -e 's/,$//' -e 's/,,//')

where entry-to-be-removed is the IP to be removed

Note: The first sed is to remove the entry, the last second is to remove the comma at the beginning, the second for a comma at the end and the last to remove the double comma when an entry is removed at the middle of the list.

Disable bypass:

config delprop squid BypassProxyFrom
config delprop squid BypassProxyTo
expand-template /etc/rc.d/init.d/masq
service masq restart
signal-event reboot

Open Ports in Private Server/Gateway Mode

  • I want to hide all ports, so I put my SMESERVER in PRIVATE SERVER/GATEWAY mode. I can still see some ports are open.

Certain services are still open on the WAN interface in PRIVATE SERVER/GATEWAY mode. Those services can be set to absolute private from the command line by:

config setprop masq Stealth yes
config setprop ftp access private
config setprop smtpd access private
config setprop dnscache access private
config setprop httpd-e-smith access private
config setprop oidentd access private
config setprop modSSL access private
config setprop ssmtpd access private
config setprop sshd access private
config setprop imaps access private
config setprop ldap access private
config setprop pop3 access private
config setprop pop3s access private
config setprop nmbd access private
config setprop smbd access private
signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot


iBays

To enable a Recycle Bin for an iBay

db accounts setprop <ibayname> RecycleBin enabled
db accounts setprop <ibayname> KeepVersions enabled
signal-event ibay-modify <ibayname>

LDAP

In the unlikely event your LDAP directory is corrupted you can do the following to "rebuild" your directory

sv d /service/ldap
mv /home/e-smith/db/ldap/domain.xxx.ldif /home/e-smith/db/ldap/domain.xxx.backup
find /var/lib/ldap -type f | xargs rm -f
expand-template /home/e-smith/db/ldap/ldif
sv u /service/ldap

Console Login

To change the console from automatic login to being prompted to login

config set ConsoleMode login
signal-event console-save
Warning.png Warning:
This functionality has been deprecated as of SME Server 9.x


General Hardware Information

Warning.png Warning:
Please read this article before buying and deploying drives. https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Timeout_Mismatch

The new type of SMR drives are NOT suitable for RAID arrays. Beware WD Red NAS drives, though recently they have made it clearer which models use SMR.

A drive failure can corrupt an entire array: RAID does not replace backup!



Important.png Note:
SME Servers RAID Options are largely automated, but even with the best laid plans things don't always go according to plan. See also: Raid:Manual Rebuild, Raid:Growing and Hard Disk Partitioning. There is a wiki on the Linux software raid, you will find many cool Tips here


Hard Drives

A software RAID array will be automatically configured as part of the installation process for servers which contain multiple hard drives. This is to ensure redundancy, so if one disk fails the system will still function.


Important.png Note:
As per the release notes, SME Server 10 RAID configuration is slightly different to previous versions. See Default RAID Rationale below for more details.


The specifics of the RAID setup depends on the number of drives available, to balance redundancy and capacity.

The root and swap volumes are configured using LVM on the RAID device /dev/md1 as follows:

  • 1 drive - no RAID
  • 2 drives - RAID 1
  • 3 drives - RAID 1 + hot spare
  • 4 drives - RAID 6
  • 5+ drives - RAID 6 + hot spare

The /boot volume and EFI partition if necessary is always a non-LVM RAID 1 array on the device /dev/md0.

If you use a hardware RAID controller to manage your drives, this should be configured to present a single volume, which SME will configure without software RAID.


Default RAID Rationale

The differences in RAID layout between SME Server 10 and previous versions is summarised below:

Number of Drives SME Server 10 Previous Versions
1 No software RAID Degraded RAID 1
2 Software RAID 1
3 RAID 1 + hot spare
4 RAID 6 RAID 5 + hot spare
5 RAID 6 + hot spare
6
7+ RAID 6 + hot spare

The main differences are no degraded RAID 1 for a single disk install, which better supports virtualised and hardware RAID use cases, and a preference for RAID 6 over RAID 5. This is to reduce the risk of a single disk failure bringing down the array. While consumer hard drives have got significantly larger over time, their unrecoverable read error rate (URE) has remained at 1 per 10^14 bits, or 12TB. As an example, imagine a server with 5 x 4TB drives. Under previous versions of SME Server this would have been configured as a 4 disk RAID 5 array with 1 hot spare. If one drive failed, the hot spare would become active and the array would begin to rebuild. This would require reading all 3 disks and, at some point during that 12TB operation, it’s very likely that an unrecoverable error would be encountered. At this point, the whole array would fail. In comparison, a RAID 6 array is tolerant to two disk failures. While this does not entirely solve the risk of a URE during rebuild, it significantly reduces the likelihood of it taking down the array. Note: RAID is a convenient method of protecting server availability from a drive failure. It does not remove the need for regular backups, which can be configured using the Server Manager.

Disk Layout

Mirroring drives in the same IDE channel (eg. hda and hdb) is not desirable. If that channel goes out, you may lose both drives. Also, performance will suffer slightly.

The preferred method is to use the primary location on each IDE channel (eg. hda and hdc). This will ensure that if you lose one channel, the other will still operate. It will also give you the best performance.

In a 2 drive setup put each drive on a different IDE channel:

IDE 1 Primary - Drive 1
IDE 1 Secondary - CDROM
IDE 2 Primary - Drive 2

Obviously this section is obsolete with SATA hard drives because each disk has its own channel.


Identifying Hard Drives

It may not always be obvious which physical hard drive maps to which logical device. The first step would be to be able to identify all block devices present on your server. This could be done by using two commands

 lsblk

or the following

 findmnt


Then, once you identified a block device , the simplest method to verify which physical drive it is, is using S.M.A.R.T. capability to map the serial number on the physical package with that displayed by smartctl. Assuming the device of interest is sda, (a SCSI drive), then you would issue the following command as root:

smartctl -i /dev/sda

Or if an IDE Drive

smartctl -i /dev/hda


Adding Additional Drives

For servers which were installed with 2+ drives and have a working RAID array, it is possible to add an additional drive which will become a hot spare, ready to be activated in case of drive failure.

See also AddExtraHardDisk. It's an alternative for part of the data if you have only one drive and you want to use RAID1. But better solution is to reinstall SME10 with 2 drives.

Ensure that any new drives are the same size or larger than your existing drives.

  • Shut down the machine
  • Install one additional drive at a time
  • Boot up
  • At the login prompt log on as admin with the root password to get to the admin console
  • Go to #5 Manage disk redundancy
  • Accept the option to add an additional drive

If the Manage disk redundancy page displays the message "The free disk count must equal one" and "Manual intervention may be required", then you probably have additional hard drives that need to be disconnected while the RAID is set up. An external USB drive will have this effect, and should be unplugged.

Reusing Hard Drives

  • MBR formatted disks

If it was ever installed on a Windows machine, or any of the *BSDs, (or in some cases an old system with RAID and/or LVM) then you will need to clear the MBR first before installing it.

From the linux command prompt, type the following:

#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx bs=512 count=1

or

#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=512 count=1

You MUST reboot so that the empty partition table gets read correctly.

For more information, check: http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2154

  • For disks previously formatted as GPT this is insufficient. It's probably best to use gdisk or parted or partx to delete the partitions; there are other tools that will work. Parted has limited support for LVM.
  • To remove the (hardware) RAID configuration that is stored at the end of the drive, do:
#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=512 count=2048 seek=$((`blockdev --getsz /dev/sdx` - 2048))

Upgrading the Hard Drive Size

Note: these instructions are only applicable if you have a RAID system with more than one drive. They are not applicable to a single-drive RAID 1 system, and increasing the useable space on such a system by cloning the existing single drive to a larger drive is not supported. See http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5311

  • CAUTION MAKE A FULL BACKUP!
  • Ensure you have e-smith-base-4.16.0-33 or newer installed. [or Update to at least 7.1.3]

HD Scenario - Current 250gb drives, new larger 500gb drives

  1. Shut down and install one larger drive in system for one old HD. Unplug any USB-connected drives.
  2. Boot up and login to the admin console and use option 5 to add the new (larger) drive to system.
  3. Wait for raid to fully sync.
  4. Repeat steps 1-3 until all drives in system are upgraded to larger capacity.
  5. Ensure all drives have been replace with larger drives and array is in sync and redundant!
  6. Issue the following commands:


Important.png Note:
SME9 uses /dev/md1 not /dev/md2.


mdadm --grow /dev/md2 --size=max
pvresize /dev/md2
lvresize -l +100%FREE main/root
ext2online -C0 /dev/main/root   

In the last command above, the -C0 is: dash C zero

If you receive an "command not found" error, try this:

resize2fs /dev/mapper/main-root &

TIP: I put an "&" at end to allow it to run in background even if I close ssh session.


Notes :

  • All of this can be done while the server is up and running with the exception of #1.
  • These instructions should work for any raid level you have as long as you have >= 2 drives
  • If you have disabled lvm , you don't need the pvresize or lvresize command, therefore the final line becomes
ext2online -C0 /dev/md2 #(or whatever / is mounted to)

or If you receive an "command not found" error, try this:

resize2fs /dev/md2 &

Replacing and Upgrading a Hard Drive after HD fail

Note: See Bugzilla: 6632 and Bugzilla:6630 a suggested sequence for Upgrading a Hard Drive size is detailed after issue when attempting to sync a new drive when added first as sda.

Note: These instructions are applicable if you have a faulty HD on a RAID system with more than one drive and intend to upgrade the sizes as well as replacing the failed HD. They are not applicable to a single-drive RAID 1 system, and increasing the useable space on such a system by cloning the existing single drive to a larger drive is not supported. See http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5311

  • CAUTION MAKE A FULL BACKUP!
  • Ensure you have e-smith-base-4.16.0-33 or newer installed. [or Update to at least 7.1.3]

HD Scenario - Current 250gb drives, new larger 500gb drives

  1. Remove failed HDD from system, ensure remaining drive is on sda on its own and boot up.
  2. Shutdown, connect one new 500gb drive as sdb and boot up
  3. Login to the admin panel and manage raid to add new (larger) drive to system.
  4. Wait for raid to fully sync
  5. Do full reboot with those 2 drives in place (1 original, 1 new)
  6. Shutdown again, disconnect the original drive, and connect the new drive just sync'd as sda (in place of original)
  7. Boot up again with just the one new drive in place, and confirm it boots OK.
  8. Shutdown, and connected the other 500gb drive as sdb
  9. Boot up login to admin panel and add sdb to the array, and wait for raid to fully sync.
  10. Reboot and ensure all drives have been replaced with larger drives and array is in sync and redundant!
  11. Issue the following commands:


Important.png Note:
SME9 uses /dev/md1 not /dev/md2.


mdadm --grow /dev/md2 --size=max
pvresize /dev/md2
lvresize -l +100%FREE main/root
ext2online -C0 /dev/main/root   

In the last command above, the -C0 is: dash C zero

If you receive an "command not found" error, try this:

resize2fs /dev/mapper/main-root &

TIP: I put an "&" at end to allow it to run in background even if I close ssh session.

Notes :

  • These instructions should work for any raid level you have as long as you have >= 2 drives
  • If you have disabled lvm , you don't need the pvresize or lvresize command, therefore the final line becomes
ext2online -C0 /dev/md2 #(or whatever / is mounted to)

or If you receive an "command not found" error, try this:

resize2fs /dev/md2 &

RAID Notes

Many on-board hardware raid cards are in fact software RAID. Turn it off as cheap "fakeraid" cards aren't good for Linux. You will generally get better performance and reliability with Linux Software RAID (http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html). Linux software RAID is fast and robust.

If you are insistent on getting a hardware RAID, buy a well supported RAID card which has a proper RAID BIOS. This hides the disks and presents a single disk to Linux (http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html). Please check that it is supported by the kernel and has some form of management. Also avoid anything which requires a driver. Try googling for the exact model of RAID controller before buying it. Please note that you won't get a real hardware raid controller cheap.

It rarely happens, but sometimes when a device has finished rebuilding, its state doesn't change from "dirty" to "clean" until a reboot occurs. This is cosmetic

Periodic scrub of RAID arrays

A Periodic scrub of RAID arrays (weekly raid check) is performed every week on Sunday at 04:22 local time, refer Bugzilla:3535 and Bugzilla:6160 for more information.

Theses operations are logged, however, no emails will be sent to admin as of the release of packages associated with Bug #6160 or the release of the 8.1 ISO.

Receive periodic check of RAID by email

There are routines in SME Server to check the RAID and sent mail to the admin user, when the RAID is degraded or when the RAID is resynchronizing. But the admin user may receive a lot of emails and sometimes messages can be forgotten. So the purpose is to have a routine which sends email to the user of your choice each week.

nano /etc/cron.weekly/raid-status.sh

You have to change the variable DEST="stephane@your-domaine-name.org" to the email you decide to use.

#!/bin/sh
# cron.weekly/mdadm-status -- weekly status of the RAID
# 2013 Pierre-Alain Bandinelli
# distributed under the terms of the Artistic Licence 2.0

# Get status from the RAID array and send the details by email.
# Email will go to the address specified in the commandline.
set -eu

MDADM=/sbin/mdadm
[ -x $MDADM ] || exit 0 # package may be removed but not purged

DEST="stephane@your-domaine-name.org"
exec $MDADM --detail  $(ls /dev/md*) | mail -s "RAID status SME Server" $DEST

save by ctrl+x

chmod +x /etc/cron.weekly/raid-status.sh

each sunday a 4h00 AM you will receive a mail which looks to this :

/dev/md1:
       Version : 0.90
 Creation Time : Sun Jan  6 20:50:41 2013
    Raid Level : raid1
    Array Size : 104320 (101.89 MiB 106.82 MB)
 Used Dev Size : 104320 (101.89 MiB 106.82 MB)
  Raid Devices : 2
 Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 1
   Persistence : Superblock is persistent

   Update Time : Sun Dec 22 04:22:42 2013
         State : clean
Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
Failed Devices : 0
 Spare Devices : 0

          UUID : 28745adb:d9cff1f4:fcb31dd8:ff24cb0c
        Events : 0.208

   Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
      0       8        1        0      active sync   /dev/sda1
      1       8       17        1      active sync   /dev/sdb1
/dev/md2:
       Version : 0.90
 Creation Time : Sun Jan  6 20:50:42 2013
    Raid Level : raid1
    Array Size : 262036096 (249.90 GiB 268.32 GB)
 Used Dev Size : 262036096 (249.90 GiB 268.32 GB)
  Raid Devices : 2
 Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 2
   Persistence : Superblock is persistent

   Update Time : Sun Dec 22 05:30:36 2013
         State : clean
Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
Failed Devices : 0
 Spare Devices : 0

          UUID : c343c79e:91c01009:fcde78b4:bad0b497
        Events : 0.224

   Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
      0       8        2        0      active sync   /dev/sda2
      1       8       18        1      active sync   /dev/sdb2

If you want to test the message sent without waiting the next sunday, you can do

/etc/cron.weekly/raid-status.sh

nospare

If you use the commandline parameter nospare during installation ("sme nospare"), the system will still count the missing spare towards the number of drives. A system with 6 physically present harddrives thus will be formated Raid6 _not_ Raid5. Resulting capacity of course will be "n-2". Note: with the release of version 7.6 and 8.0, the commandline parameter "sme nospare" has been changed to "sme spares=0" . In addition, you may also select the number of spare(s) implemented [0,1,or 2].

remove the degraded RAID message

When you install the smeserver with one drive with a degraded raid, you will see a 'U_' state but without warnings. If you want to leave just one 'U' in the /proc/mdstat and stop all future questions about your degraded raid state, then :

mdadm --grow /dev/md0 --force --raid-devices=1
mdadm --grow /dev/md1 --force --raid-devices=1

after that you will see this

# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1] 
md0 : active raid1 sda1[0]
     255936 blocks super 1.0 [1/1] [U]
     
md1 : active raid1 sda2[0]
     268047168 blocks super 1.1 [1/1] [U]
     bitmap: 2/2 pages [8KB], 65536KB chunk

unused devices: <none>

Resynchronising a Failed RAID

Information.png Tip:
You can refer to 'man mdadm' or Mdadm Man page or Raid:Manual_Rebuild


Sometimes a partition will be taken offline automatically. Admin will receive an email DegradedArray event on /dev/md2.


Important.png Note:
This will happen if, for example, a read or write error is detected in a disk in the RAID set, or a disk does not respond fast enough, causing a timeout. As a precaution, verify the health of your disks as documented in: Monitor_Disk_Health and specifically with the command:


smartctl -a /dev/hda

Where hda is the device to be checked; check all of them.

You may check the health of your array using the Admin Console. Login as root, type console. Select Item 5. "Manage disk reduncancy"

--------Disk Reduncancy status as of Thursday Dec 22 -------
             	Current RAID status:
             
             	Personalities : [raid1]
             		md2 : active raid1 hda2[0] <-- NOTICE hdb2[#] is missing. Means hdb2[#] failed.	
                                     38973568 blocks [2/1] [U_]
             
             		md1 : active raid1 hda1[0] hdb1[1]
                   			104320 blocks [2/2] [UU]
             
             			unused devices: <none>
             	Only Some of the RAID devices are unclean.  <-- NOTICE This message and 
             	Manual intervention may be required. <-- this message.

Notice the last 2 sentences of the window above. You have some problems.
If your system is healthy however the message you will see at the bottom of Raid Console window is:

All RAID devices are in clean state

If you have no software RAID devices you will see the message at the bottom of the Console window:

Your system only has a single disk drive installed or is using hardware 
mirroring. If you would like to enable software mirroring, please shut
down, install a second disk drive (of the same capacity) and then return
to this screen.

Additionally, the details of the raid can be seen by inspecting the mdstat file from the shell prompt.

[root@sme]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md1 : active raid1 hda3[0] hdb3[1]
     38837056 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md2 : active raid1 hdb2[1]        <--    Shows current active partition - note there is one missing
     1048704 blocks [2/1] [_U]    <--    '_' = partition missing from array

md0 : active raid1 hda1[0] hdb1[1]
     255936 blocks [2/2] [UU]

Make a note of the raid partition that has failed, shown by [_U]
In this case it is md2, the device being /dev/md2.

The failed drive partition is indicated by the '_' underline character. In the above example _U indicates that the first drive partition on md2, (Multi-Device 2) has failed. The second drive partition on md2, symbolized by the character 'U' is still part of the md2. If the second drive partition had failed, that is hdb2 then the details would be reversed. E.g. [U_] . Placing the _ Underline second in the details.

Determine the missing physical partition, Look carefully at the sample above and fill in the gap for which drive is missing.
In this example, it's hda2, the device being /dev/hda2

md1 : active raid1 hda3[0] hdb3[1]
md2 : active raid1 hda2[0] hdb2[1]   <--- In the above sample hda2[0] is missing
md0 : active raid1 hda1[0] hdb1[1]

If the raid has a failed disk that has not yet been kicked out of the array then mdstat will show something like the following:

md2 : active raid1 hda2[0](F) hdb2[1]   <--    Shows current active partition - with one FAILED (F)
     1048704 blocks [2/1] [_U]          <--    '_' = partition missing from array

In this case before you add the disk back in you will need to remove the disk as per:

[root@sme]# mdadm --remove /dev/md2 /dev/hda2

However if the drive has already been removed by the operating system then removing the drive is unnecessary. To determine this use the command:

mdadm --query --detail /dev/md2

Of course use the proper md# based on your configuration. This command will give you several lines of data, including the size of the array. Near the end of the output you will see the following if the drive has been removed already. There is no need to remove the drive since it has already been removed.

   Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
      0       3        2        0      active sync   /dev/hda2
      1       0        0        -      removed      <-- NOTE THIS 


To add the physical partition back and rebuild the raid partition.

[root@sme]# mdadm --add /dev/md2 /dev/hda2

Once you type the command the following message will appear, appropriate for your device.

 [root@sme]  mdadm: hot added /dev/hda2

It important to know that your devices are likely to be different, E.G your device could be /dev/sda2 or you may have more than two disks, including a hot standby. These details can always be determined from the mdstat file. Once the raid resync has been started, the progress will be noted in mdstat. You can see this real time by:

[root@sme]# watch -n .1 cat /proc/mdstat

or you can see this in a snapshot by:

[root@sme]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md1 : active raid1 hda3[0] hdb3[1]
      38837056 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md2 : active raid1 hda2[2] hdb2[1]
      1048704 blocks [2/1] [_U]
      [=>...................]  recovery =  6.4% (67712/1048704) finish=1.2min speed=13542K/sec
md0 : active raid1 hda1[0] hdb1[1]
      255936 blocks [2/2] [UU]

When recovery is complete, the partitions will all be up:

[root@sme]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md1 : active raid1 hda3[0] hdb3[1]
      38837056 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md2 : active raid1 hda2[0] hdb2[1]
     1048704 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md0 : active raid1 hda1[0] hdb1[1]
      255936 blocks [2/2] [UU]

If this action is required regularly, you should test your disks for SMART errors and physical errors, check your disk cables, and make sure no two hard drives share the same IDE port. See also: http://wiki.contribs.org/Monitor_Disk_Health

Also check your driver cards, since a faulty card can destroy the data on a full RAID set as easily as it can a single disk.


Information.png Tip:
we could use a shortcut for the raid rebuild :
mdadm -f /dev/md2 /dev/hda2 -r /dev/hda2 -a /dev/hda2


Convert Software RAID1 to RAID5

Important.png Note:
these instructions are only applicable if you have SME8 or greater and a RAID1 system with 2 hd in sync; new drive(s) must be of the same size or larger as the current drive(s)


Warning.png Warning:
Please make a full backup before proceeding


Warning.png Warning:
Newer versions of mdadm use the v1.x superblocks stored at the beginning of the block device, which could overwrite the filesystem metadata. You’ll need to be starting with a v0.9 metadata device for the above instructions to work (which was the default for years).First, check the existing superblock version with:

mdadm –detail /dev/md0

Then, when re-creating the RAID 5 array, make sure you add the –metadata=0.9 tag so the superblock is recreated in the right place. Unfortunately, v1.0 give a new size for the md device (smaller than the original array), v1.1 and v1.2 corrupts the filesystem outright, so best to avoid these cases entirely. Creating a new array with v1.x superblocks when the original was v0.9 is likewise outright destructive.


  1. Login as root
  2. Move to /boot (we must create a new initrd image to load raid5 driver). cd /boot
  3. Make a backup copy mv initrd-`uname -r`.img initrd-`uname -r`.img.old
  4. Create the new image mkinitrd --preload raid5 initrd-`uname -r`.img `uname -r`
  5. Shut down and install new drive(s) in system.
  6. Boot up with SME cd and enter the rescue mode. sme rescue
  7. Skip network setup.
  8. Skip mounting the current SME installation.
  9. Now, create on the new drive(s) the correct partition table. sfdisk -d /dev/sda > tmp.out sfdisk /dev/sdc < tmp.out
  10. Repeat the last step for each new hd (sdd, sde etc.).
  11. Create the new array mdadm --create /dev/md2 -c 256 --level=5 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 mdadm: /dev/sda2 appears to be part of a raid array: level=raid1 devices=2 ctime=Fri Dec 18 13:17:49 2009 mdadm: /dev/sdb2 appears to be part of a raid array: level=raid1 devices=2 ctime=Fri Dec 18 13:17:49 2009 Continue creating array? y mdadm: array /dev/md2 started.
  12. Wait for resync; monitor the status with cat /proc/mdstat root# cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid0] [raid1] [raid5] md2 : active raid5 sdb1[2] sda1[0] 1048512 blocks level 5, 256k chunk, algorithm 2 [2/1] [U_] [==>..................] recovery = 12.5% (132096/1048512) finish=0.8min speed=18870K/sec
  13. Reboot exit
  14. Login as root
  15. Add the new drives to the array mdadm --add /dev/md2 /dev/sdc2
  16. Repeat the last step for each new hd (sdd2, sde2 etc.)
  17. Grow the array mdadm --grow /dev/md2 --raid-devices=N
  18. N is the total number of drives: minimum is 3
  19. Wait for array reshaping. This part can take a substantial amount of time; monitor it with cat /proc/mdstat root# cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid0] [raid1] [raid5] md2 : active raid5 sdc1[2] sdb1[1] sda1[0] 1048512 blocks super 0.91 level 5, 256k chunk, algorithm 2 [3/3] [UUU] [==>..................] reshape = 12.5% (131520/1048512) finish=2.5min speed=5978K/sec
  20. Issue the following commands: pvresize /dev/md2 lvresize -l +100%FREE main/root resize2fs /dev/main/root

Notes :

  • If you have disabled lvm
  1. you don't need the pvresize or lvresize command
  2. the final line becomes resize2fs /dev/md2 (or whatever / is mounted to)
  3. More info: http://www.arkf.net/blog/?p=47

Add another Raid to mount to /home/e-smith/files

this is inspired from previous content of AddExtraHardDisk and particularly the part AddExtraHardDisk#Additional steps to create a raid array from multiple disks but updated to 2022 and SME10

1 you need to check what disk you want, using lsblk

# lsblk --fs
NAME   FSTYPE            LABEL                    UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                                                    
├─sda1 vfat                                       B93A-85A4                            /boot/efi
├─sda2 xfs                                        89e9cc9e-d3d2-4d02-bad5-2698aea0a510 /boot
├─sda3 swap                                       64d21f89-4d7c-417a-907e-34236f6cd0be [SWAP]
└─sda4 xfs                                        65bf712c-2186-4524-aae8-edd8151de1e7 /
sdb    
sdc

then you can create the Raid array. We assume you only need onethen you need to rebuild the grub.conf, depending on your system is EFI or legacy use the appropriate command#EFI

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/centos/grub.cfg #Legacy grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Raid partition, and hence do not need to partition it.

#create array
mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md11 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc
# add to mdadm.conf
mdadm --detail --scan --verbose /dev/md11 >> /etc/mdadm.conf

then format it and enable quotas. If you want to add a LVM Layer, this is just before that !

mkfs.xfs /dev/md11

now you have

# lsblk --fs
NAME   FSTYPE            LABEL                    UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                                                    
├─sda1 vfat                                       B93A-85A4                            /boot/efi
├─sda2 xfs                                        89e9cc9e-d3d2-4d02-bad5-2698aea0a510 /boot
├─sda3 swap                                       64d21f89-4d7c-417a-907e-34236f6cd0be [SWAP]
└─sda4 xfs                                        65bf712c-2186-4524-aae8-edd8151de1e7 /
sdb    linux_raid_member localhost.localdomain:11 6c4b9640-7349-15fe-28b1-78843d9a149a 
└─md11 xfs                                        0ab4fe2a-aa81-4728-90d8-2f96d4624af8 
sdc    linux_raid_member localhost.localdomain:11 6c4b9640-7349-15fe-28b1-78843d9a149a 
└─md11 xfs                                        0ab4fe2a-aa81-4728-90d8-2f96d4624af8

then you need to mount it temporary to move your content

mkdir /mnt/newdisk
mount /dev/md11 /mnt/newdisk
rsync -arv /home/e-smith/files/ /mnt/newdisk

When happy with result simply add an entry to you fstab, according to last lsblk output in this case you should add

UUID=0ab4fe2a-aa81-4728-90d8-2f96d4624af8 /home/e-smith/files            xfs     uquota,gquota        0 0

To have the disk mounted on reboot, you need to alter grub

vim /etc/default/grub

and alter the command line to add either "rd.md=1 rd.md.conf=1 rd.auto=1" or specifically add the uuid to mount (obviously if you add a LVM layer you will rather need to add something like rd.lvm.lv=mylvm/video rd.lvm.lv=mylvm/files)

 1GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
 2GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .*$,,g' /etc/system-release)"
 3GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
 4GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
 5GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="gfxterm"
 6GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet rootflags=uquota,pquota rd.md=1 rd.md.conf=1 rd.auto=1"
 7GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="false"
 8GRUB_BACKGROUND="/boot/grub2/smeserver10.png"
 9GRUB_GFXMODE="1024x768"
10GRUB_THEME="/boot/grub2/themes/koozali/theme.txt"

then you need to make sure dracut will add the drivers

vim /etc/dracut.conf

and alter the line needed (you probably will need to uncomment this line and add mdraid between the quote)

19# dracut modules to add to the default
20add_dracutmodules+="lvm mdraid"
21
22# install local /etc/mdadm.conf
23mdadmconf="yes"
24
25# install local /etc/lvm/lvm.conf
26lvmconf="yes"

Finally rebuild the initfs

cp /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img.old
dracut --add="lvm mdraid" /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r) --force

Copy data from one disk of an old Raid mirror disk

Let's say you want to copy the huge amount of data you excluded from the backup to migrate from SME9 to SME10 and now you want to copy this to your new server.

This How-To assume your current install is without LVM. An extra trick is needed if you have a LVM and previous SME9 also. You simply need to rename the vg group either of the old SME or new one using a rescue disk or another Linux distro, see UpgradeDisk#Moving from SME 8.x to SME 9.x.

  1. put one of the old drives in the server or in an external case and connect it
  2. use lsblk to identify the drive
  3. adapt the following commands
# lsblk
sdd         8:48   0 931,5G  0 disk  
├─sdd1      8:49   0   250M  0 part  
└─sdd2      8:50   0 931,3G  0 part

We assume that sd1 was the boot partition and the stuff we want is in sdd2

#assemble and run on degraded 
mdadm -A /dev/md126 /dev/sdd2 --run

now let's try to mount, it will work only if you had no LVM, or it will return this

# mkdir /mnt/olddisk/
# mount /dev/md126 /mnt/olddisk/
mount: filesystem « LVM2_member » unknown

you can skip this step if you did not got the LVM error. Then we need to activate the LVM, and we can assume you might need also to install lvm stuffs...

# yum install lvm2 -y
vgchange -a y main
mount /dev/mapper/main-root  /mnt/olddisk/

It is now time to copy your stuffs.

rsync -arvHAX  /mnt/olddisk/home/e-smith/files/ /home/e-smith/files

then to remove safely your disk

umount /dev/mapper/main-root
vgchange -a n main
mdadm --stop /dev/md126


Removable Media

CD or DVD Drives are likely to be located at /media/cdrecorder
to read from a cd, first mount with

mount /media/cdrecorder

or check with

cat /etc/fstab |grep media

USB Drives

Incomplete.png Incomplete:
This article or section needs to be expanded. Please help to fill the gaps or discuss the issue on the talk page


Adding new software

New software should be installed from RPMs
Red Hat or Centos Version .el4 rpms should be compatible for SME7, use .el5 for SME8 and .el6 for SME9.
Often these rpms are configured with a SME Server integration rpm.

Packages available

User contributed documentation is located in Category:Contrib.

Packages are available in the smecontribs repository or other individuals repositories.

Installing software

Server Manager

SME Server has an option to install software using the Software Installer option in the server-manager, after enabling 'Manage Individual Packages' you can install rpms from enabled repositories and if you know exactly what you are doing, you can also remove rpms.

From SME Server 7.2 you can restrict the software that is shown in the 'Software Installer' - 'Available packages' dialog. Use this to hide software that you don't want: eg desktop software such as openoffice from the centos repositories.

At a command line as root you can allow one or more terms that are contained in the repository name

config setprop yum RestrictRepo sme,dungog

Or one or more terms that are contained in the rpm name

config setprop yum RestrictRpm perl

If you add both these examples only rpms with perl in their name and are in any of the enabled sme or dungog repositories will be visible.

yum_update_dbs 

to update the database, ignore the messages.

Command Line

SME Server uses yum to install software, this is a newer and improved version of the well-known rpm command. Yum makes use of so-called repositories in which a lot of pacakges (RPMs) are stored. The big advantage of yum over rpm is that it can not only determine it's own dependencies, but if can also download required dependencies from enabled repositories. With everyone having yum repositories set up the same way, Howto authors can now use instructions like:

yum --enablerepo=dag install packagename


Localinstall

To install an RPM already on your system you can also use yum to install:

yum localinstall /path/to/packagename.rpm

To satisfy dependencies you can enable or disable other repositories using the --enablerepo=xxx or the --disablerepo=xxx option.

Important.png Note:
Using yum will run other actions such as updating server-manager menus, that rpm -Uvh will not!


Yum Repositories

Yum repositories on SME Server are to be configured by the internal configuration database. Repositories are stored in the yum_repositories database. The yum configuration file, located at /etc/yum.conf holds the actual configuration and is generated using the data in the yum_repositories database.

Checking status of installed repositories

To check which repositories are installed and their status do

/sbin/e-smith/audittools/repositories

On an unmodified sme server only the following are enabled

base: enabled

smeaddons: enabled

smeextras: enabled

smeos: enabled

smeupdates: enabled

updates: enabled

Any other repository that is installed and listed should have a status of disabled. This is to prevent the inadvertant and potentially undesirable update of packages. To update packages from other repos, use the --enablerepo=reponame switch in the yum update command eg

yum update --enablerepo=dag

which will also bring in any rpm updates from the dag repo (only for packages that are already installed on your system). See more details below.

Installing or modifying a repository

For the syntax of modifying or adding see the examples below in the 3rd-Party Yum Repositories setup section. For more details on the configuration database and how to work with it see the [SME_Server:Documentation SME Server Developer's Guide]. After adding or modifying the yum_repositories database you will have to make sure you regenerate the configuration file using the following command:

signal-event yum-modify

Options for the yum_repositories database

The repositories for SME Server are configured using the internal yum-repositories configuration database. There are several options that can be set for every repository:

  • Visible yes|no - yes displays in server manager
  • status enabled|disabled - disabled are ignored unless specified with --enablerepo=
  • Exclude=xxx,yyy - don't fetch these rpms
  • IncludePkgs=xxx,yyy - only fetch these rpms

3rd-Party Yum Repositories setup

A list of repositories for SME Server is available in Category:Yum Repository.

If you use the commands below to add 3rd party yum repositories, they will be added to the yum-repositories database, but not enabled by default, so this will not affect automatic yum upgrades. It only adds options for running yum manually.

To reflect the changes in the database you will have to regenerate the yum.conf file:

 signal-event yum-modify


Warning.png Warning:
Be sure to never set the status of one of these repositories to enabled as this imposes the risk of installing newer versions SME Server core packages which might break your server. If you want to install software from them you can enable them using the SME Server shell and the yum option --enablerepo=reponame.



Below are a few repositories, for which the configuration can be copied to the SME Server shell to install them on your server. The lines are long, but it so you can cut and paste into your ssh client. Also note you shouldn't enable these repositories, they should just be used at the command line with "yum install", and not with "yum upgrade".

If a site has a RPM-GPG-KEY you have to install it first with a line such as.

rpm --import http://dag.wieers.com/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt

Restoring Default Yum Repositories

If you have problems with your yum setup you may have entered incorrect repository values

Remove the current values and restore the original setting with these commands

cd /home/e-smith/db/
mv yum_repositories yum_repositories.po
/etc/e-smith/events/actions/initialize-default-databases

Now you have a clean install, you can re-add 3rd party repos as described above

signal-event yum-modify

and check

yum update


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