Enable the debug Loglevel in ISPConfig

Login to the ISPConfig intterface and set the log level to Debug under System > System > Server Config (see also chapter 4.9.2.2 of the ISPConfig 3 manual) for the affected server. After one or two minutes, there should be more detailed messages in ISPConfig’s system log (Monitor > System State (All Servers) > Show System-Log).

Disable the server.sh cronjob

Go to the command line of the server on which the error happens (on multiserver systems, it is often the slave and not the master) and run (as root):

crontab -e

Comment out the server.sh cron job:

#* * * * * /usr/local/ispconfig/server/server.sh > /dev/null >> /var/log/ispconfig/cron.log

Run the server script manually to get detailed debug output

Then run the command:

/usr/local/ispconfig/server/server.sh

This will display any errors directly on the command line which should help you to fix the error. If you have fixed
the error, please don’t forget to uncomment the server.sh cron job again.

apt-get install libapache-mod-security

Create the folder for the mod-security configuration files

mkdir /etc/apache2/mod-security
chmod 600 /etc/apache2/mod-security

Download and unpack the mod-security rules

cd /tmp
wget http://www.modsecurity.org/download/modsecurity-core-rules_2.5-1.6.1.tar.gz
tar fvx modsecurity-core-rules_2.5-1.6.1.tar.gz
mv *.conf /etc/apache2/mod-security/
ln -s /var/log/apache2 /etc/apache2/logs

Configure apache to load the activated mod-security rules

vi /etc/apache2/conf.d/mod-security.conf

Include /etc/apache2/mod-security/*.conf

To enable mod-security, edit the file

vi /etc/apache2/mod-security/modsecurity_crs_10_config.conf

and remove the # in front of the line:

SecDefaultAction “phase:2,log,deny,status:403,t:lowercase,t:replaceNulls,t:compressWhitespace”

Then reload apache.

/etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Mod security will now start to block hack attempts to your websites and log the actions in the file /var/log/apache2/modsec_audit.log.

tail /var/log/apache2/modsec_audit.log

You will see very likely some falsely blocked URL’s. To whitelist them, you can add the ID’s of the rules that should not be used in the whitelist file.

Example:

vi /etc/apache2/mod-security/modsecurity_crs_99_whitelist.conf

SecRuleRemoveById 960015
SecRuleRemoveById 960016

 413 Request Entity Too Large

The configuration variable for this option is “client_max_body_size” and it can be set in the http, server and location sections of the nginx configuration file. To set the Limit globally to 25 MB, edit the nginx.conf file and add:

client_max_body_size 20M;

in the http section.

Example for Ubuntu Linux:

user www-data;
worker_processes 4;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
        worker_connections 768;
        # multi_accept on;
}

http {
        geoip_country  /etc/nginx/geoip/GeoIP.dat; # the country IP database
        geoip_city     /etc/nginx/geoip/GeoLiteCity.dat; # the city IP database
        ##
        # Basic Settings
        ##

        sendfile on;
        tcp_nopush on;
        tcp_nodelay on;
        keepalive_timeout 65;
        types_hash_max_size 2048;

        client_max_body_size 20M;

        include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
        default_type application/octet-stream;

        ##
        # Logging Settings
        ##

        access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
        error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

        ##
        # Gzip Settings
        ##

        gzip on;
        gzip_disable "msie6";

        ##
        # Virtual Host Configs
        ##

        include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
        include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

In Detail:

• Reject sender hostnames with invalid syntax
• Reject sender hostnames that are no fully qualified domains (e.g. reject “server1″ but allow server1.domain.tld)
• Reject sender domains that have no DNS records
• Check sender IP addresses against realtime blacklists.

First make a backup of the postfix main.cf file in case that you want to reverse the changes later:

cp -pf /etc/postfix/main.cf /etc/postfix/main.cf.bak

Then execute this command to enable the additional spam protection functions (the command is one line!).

postconf -e ‘smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_mynetworks, permit_sasl_authenticated, reject_invalid_hostname, reject_non_fqdn_hostname, reject_unknown_recipient_domain, reject_non_fqdn_recipient, reject_unauth_destination, reject_non_fqdn_sender, reject_unknown_sender_domain, reject_unknown_recipient_domain, reject_rbl_client cbl.abuseat.org,reject_rbl_client dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net,reject_rbl_client ix.dnsbl.manitu.net, check_recipient_access mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual_recipient.cf, reject_unauth_destination’

Then restart postfix:

/etc/init.d/postfix restart

The message has this format:

————————————————————————
From: ISPConfig <postmaster@localhost.localdomain>
Subject: Welcome to your new email account.

Welcome to your new email account. Your webmaster.
————————————————————————

The first line starts with “From: ” followed by the sender email address. The second line starts with “Subject: ” followed by the email subject. The third line should be empty. All following lines are the email text.

The email text files are named “welcome_email_<language>.txt” where <language> has to be replaced with the system language like “en” for English or “de” for German language, e.g. “welcome_email_en.txt” for the english welcome email.

The customized language file should be stored in the folder /usr/local/ispconfig/server/conf-custom/mail/ so that it does not get overwritten by ISPConfig updates.

/home/admispconfig/ispconfig/tools/spamassassin/usr/bin/sa-update

To test if Spamassassin works with the new ruleset, run this command:

/home/admispconfig/ispconfig/tools/spamassassin/usr/bin/spamassassin –lint

If it does not return an error message, then Spamassassin is working correctly.

Error Opening file /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat

The solution is to install the missing package manually:

apt-get install geoip-database

Edit the postfix main.cf file:

vi /etc/postfix/main.cf

and add the line:

smtp_bind_address = 192.168.0.1

were 192.168.0.1 has to be replaced with the primary IP address of the server. Then restart postfix:

/etc/init.d/postfix restart

Filesystem notification initialization error -- contact your mail
administrator (check for configuration errors with the FAM/Gamin library)

when I tried to access a IMAP share. The resaon for the problem seems to be that the “fam” package was not working correctly. The solution is to install the gamin package which can replace fam in a courier setup:

apt-get install gamin

Dont worry when you get a message from apt that libfam0 gets uninstalled but is required by courier. This had no geative effects on my server.

Installation

apt-get install libapache2-mod-evasive

Create the log directory for mod_evasive

mkdir -p /var/log/apache2/evasive
chown -R www-data:root /var/log/apache2/evasive

Now we add the configuration for the module at the end of the file /etc/apache2/mods-available/mod-evasive.load

vi /etc/apache2/mods-available/mod-evasive.load

so that it looks like this:

LoadModule evasive20_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_evasive20.so

DOSHashTableSize 3097
DOSPageCount 2
DOSSiteCount 50
DOSPageInterval 5
DOSSiteInterval 1
DOSBlockingPeriod 10
DOSLogDir “/var/log/apache2/evasive”

and restart apache:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart