spamd Errors on New Ubuntu 14.04 Server - Permission denied

Not being overly familiar with Ubuntu Server, I ran across another log file with important info.../var/log/mail.err...which contains lines like:

A little Googling seems to indicate that I might need "allow_user_rules 1" in the Spamassassin config. But in Virtualmin, the Spamassassin config is 'distributed' and I'm not sure which user_prefs file to edit or if I'm evenon the right track.

Maybe there's some user/group/permissions issue I need to deal with first?

BTW, here is the answer to your question: /usr/lib/perl5/Net/DNS/RR/NS.pm

And yes, this is a VM, but it's on our infrastructure (XenServer) and I built the Ubuntu VM myself.

Thanks,

G

I just tried a test and it seemed to work, so maybe the permissions idea is wrong.

Seems to work OK, but this was still logged in /var/log/mail.log:

G

You don't suppose this issue has anything to do with IPv6, do you? I'm not well versed in v6...

G

I can make ssh access temporarily available...

Thanks,

G

Hi, and thanks again.

'spamc' is the selected option...and it IS working, at least partly.

No repos enabled, other than the defaults and Virtualmin...not even the Canonical partner repos.

Fully updated.

You don't suppose it might be because I have ALL the listed modules enabled, do you? (Our old CentOS Virtualmin server also had all the perl modules installed.) You commented the installing additional perl modules was usually unnecessary, but that was not my previous experience, so I enabled CPAN (cpanm) and installed all the perl modules queried by:

However, the module that is apparently responsible for the errors was installed by a package (libnet-dns-perl). I just did a reinstall of that package, but no change:

Every incoming message gets something like:

G

Almost nothing:

(IPs obfuscated)

Maybe this is another clue. Not sure if it's related, but it's more SA problems:

In Usermin, if a user tries to "Report Spam", it errors out with this visible in the browser window:

It seems that SA is having trouble finding or using built-in SA perl modules.

It seems there must be some path or environment issue, maybe?

This is killing me. I really appreciate any pointers you can give me as Googling hasn't served me well here.

Thanks,

G

I have concluded that the Ubuntu Spamassassin installation and the Virtualmin installation script simply do not produce a working spam filter when installed on the latest Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Since we purchased and maintain our support of Virtualmin Pro to avoid this situation, this is disappointing.

I'm not sure how correct these command examples are, but spamc (which is how I want to use Spamassassin) appears to run correctly:

But spamd logs this for the above spamc command:

Spamassassin appears to run correctly as root:

But it errors out completely when run as a regular user:

I have reinstalled both spamassassin and spamc using the --reinstall option.

sa-update runs OK after tweaking the ownership of /var/lib/spamassassin/3.004000.

sa-learn bombs right away when run as a regular user:

But runs fine when run as root:

I suspect the same basic problem is causing all these failures.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

G

I apologize, but procmail looks like voodoo to me.

When we put up the new server and migrated the domains, we did not migrate the Virtualmin configuration...we did the domains only since we were switching OS's from CentOS to Ubuntu. So I would imaging most of the server configuration to be default Ubuntu+Virtualmin...like procmail.

Postfix, on the other hand, has been tweaked some, but not this parameter:

Thanks again,

G

No errors noted in /var/log/procmail.log.

Thanks again,

G

"spamd" and "spamd child" are both running as root. Setting "-u debian-spamd" in /etc/default/spamassassin makes "spamd child" run as debian-spamd, but it makes the logged problems worse.

/var/lib/spamassassin is owned by debian-spamd.

/etc/spamassassin is owned by root. The errors being logged in var/log/messages are by "spamd child"

Is this all correct? It doesn't make much sense to me...

It appears that the logged errors are mainly from the URIDNSBL.pm plugin, but running "spamassassin -D" as root from the command line does not show the same errors.

Is this possibly an ENV (environment) issue for "spamd" or "spamd child" ?

sa-learn won't run as a user. Trying to mark a message as spam in Usermin results in:

Looking for coincident messages/errors:

/var/log/syslog No (Ubuntu 14.04 doesn't have /var/log/messages) /var/log/kern.log No (Just duplicated firewall messages from syslog) dmesg No (more duplicated firewall messages from syslog)

Ubuntu Server logging is messed up. I'm beginning to regret switching to Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS.

I have now gotten more drastic in trying to fix this...and I'm breaking things. Bad for a production server.

I've disabled and uninstalled AppArmor.

I've disabled IPv6, and all the various services that were configured to use it.

I've also noticed that the cron job to update SA rules doesn't work properly. Since it runs as debian-spamd probably.

The goofed up mixture of ownership, permissions and run-as are just a mess with Spamassassin. Doesn't anybody sanity-check this stuff? Baggage from SA, Debian, Ubuntu, Virtualmin... Unless it's just too much work, you guys should use your own packages to keep idiots like me from going through this nightmare. Or integrate MailScanner...or something.

Sorry for whining...

G

Well, that did something. It turned off spam filtering...no references in mail.log and no SA headers on received messages. That HAS to be a big clue.

Unfortunately, I still don't really understand how Virtualmin does the mail filter routing. There is no milter configured in /etc/postfix/master.cf and no additional Received: headers, so I'm not sure how it works.

I have made some headway though...

I did Re-run Install Wizard (don't know if helped).

I did Re-check Configuration (it checked OK again).

I tweaked the permissions of /var/lib/spamassassin and a couple of things improved:

1) It appears the spamc configuration is no longer causing errors to be logged on every incoming message (by "spamd child").

2) Errors are no longer thrown in the browser (Usermin) when clicking Report Spam.

Running spamc now seems to work:

When that spamc command is run, spamd only logs:

Running spamassassin as root still works:

I learned something important about those errors locating perl modules: I think it has to do with root's environment polluting things. Adding a 'dash' to the command line seems to change everything when run manually. I don't know how/if this is important to Virtualmin.

Running spamassassin as a user doesn't work without the 'dash'. This command bombs:

It has multiple problems running SA plugins:

then fails with:

However, this version of that command (with the 'dash') works properly:

Same for sa-learn. This command bombs:

And this version (with 'dash') runs fine:

As for sa-update, it now seems to run correctly also (command from /etc/cron.daily/spamassassin):

So, I'm much closer, but I still want to fix things completely.

Why does setting "SpamAssassin client program" to standalone effectively turn off the filtering completely?

Thanks again,

G

Hi and thanks for the offer.

It's working pretty well right now, so I'm afraid to 'poke the bear'. SA always takes a lot out of me but it always works pretty well after all the tweaking.

Customers are happy now...

I don't really need to worry about any other configuration since I need it to work with spamc anyway.

Thanks for all your help.

G