HEP System Administration

When logging into webmail (something I hadn’t done for a very long time and I don’t think many others have used it either), I wasn’t able to see mail. Instead I got errors about the redirect.php page. On some browsers, it even tried to download the php file instead of viewing it. Turns out in /etc/squirrelmail/config.php, I hadn’t changed the domain to the new name of the computer. Once I fixed that and restarted http, everything worked fine.

Some of the scripts that run to check for certain conditions use sendmail to “file” a report to me. Unfortunately, on many upgraded machines, sendmail was not configured correctly, so the report never left the machine on which the script was run. Since I don’t want to log into each machine to get the reports, I have to change who gets the reports. This is done with /etc/mail/aliases. This used to be sent out from the head node to all other machines, but that no longer will work. Mailman also uses the aliases file to store its information. So, I decided to simply send out a new aliases file once, to update all machines. Then manually go to the mailman server and fix the aliases file. (Then have to run newaliases for them to take effect.) When I get some time, I’ll write a script that does this all automatically (or that uses cfengine for it, which would be even better).

In the upgrade, I missed installing the hypermail package. I installed the rpm as soon as I noticed. We probably don’t need to use this now that we’re running mailman. But, just in case, I’ve installed it anyway. It’s invoked from the crontab with:

/usr/bin/hypermail -m /var/spool/mail/theta13mail -d /web/mwtheta13/archive
/usr/bin/hypermail -m /var/spool/mail/apsmail -d /web/apsreactor/archive

The version of sendmail that came with RHEL4 had these two lines in the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file.

TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`EXTERNAL DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl
define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS’, `EXTERNAL GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl

For most mail readers, this was ok, but PC-Pine had a lot of problems with it. Since we’re already using SSL to connect, I changed the lines to this:

TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl
define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS’, `LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl

Now, PC-Pine works as expected.

Copied /usr/local/bin/tkpostage and /usr/local/lib/TkPostage.xbm from hep to hep1. It looks to be working.

Edit the file: /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py. Basically, adding the hostname of the computer running it.

DEFAULT_URL_HOST  = 'hostname.uchicago.edu'
DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST = 'hostname.uchicago.edu'

Since I had screwed it up previously, all my links and things were saying localhost.localdomain, instead of the above hostname. The solution was to use rpm to delete mailman, delete all the rpmsave files and reinstall. Then I just edited the above file and /etc/httpd/conf.d/mailman.conf. That took care of it. Next, I set the site password with mmsitepass and started the mailman service. Lastly, copied the files from /var/lib/mailman to /web/hep/mailman, made the link “ln -s /web/hep/mailman /var/lib/mailman” and changed the permissions on /web/hep/mailman to:

drwxrwsr-x root mailman mailman/

To add a new list, run /usr/lib/mailman/bin/newlist and follow the prompts. The last step is to add the following lines to /etc/mail/aliases and run newaliases. Note that test needs to be changed to the new list name.

test:              "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post test"
test-admin:        "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman admin test"
test-bounces:      "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces test"
test-confirm:      "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman confirm test"
test-join:         "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman join test"
test-leave:        "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman leave test"
test-owner:        "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman owner test"
test-request:      "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman request test"
test-subscribe:    "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe test"
test-unsubscribe:  "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe test"

Files are in /usr/lib/mailman. Edit the file, /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py. Originally, I put our fqdn of the host in DEFAULT_URL_HOST and DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST, but this didn’t work. After I commented out these two lines, I was able to successfully run check_perms.

/usr/lib/mailman/bin/newlist mailman
Enter the email of the person running the list:  me@hep
Initial mailman password:  usual one
To finish creating your mailing list, you must edit your /etc/aliases (or
equivalent) file by adding the following lines, and possibly running the 
`newaliases' program:

## mailman mailing list
mailman:                   "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post mailman"
mailman-admin:         "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman admin mailman"
mailman-bounces:       "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces mailman"
mailman-confirm:        "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman confirm mailman"
mailman-join:              "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman join mailman"
mailman-leave:            "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman leave mailman"
mailman-owner:           "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman owner mailman"
mailman-request:          "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman request mailman"
mailman-subscribe:       "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe mailman"
mailman-unsubscribe:    "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe mailman"

Hit enter to notify mailman owner...

Each time tried to login to squirrelmail, immediately bounced back to a page saying that you have to login before you can access the page. The problem turned out to be the group ownership of /var/lib/php/session. It was set as root:root. After changed to root:apache, could login.

Since many isps and VirusScan both block port 25, the only way to send mail in these instances is to use the submission port 587. Eudora version 6.2.3.4 has a box to check called “Use submission port (587)”. However, when using tcpdump to watch packets on port 587, it can be seen that Eudora does NOT, in fact, use port 587, but continues to use port 25. The solution is to edit the eudora.ini file and add a line. After the UseSubmissionPort line, add smtpport=587. These lines should look like this:

UseSubmissionPort=1
smtpport=587

After saving and restarting Eudora, mail is sent on the correct port.