Upgrade Wrecks MailScanner

Paul Scott sales at edenusa.com
Fri Oct 14 05:52:25 UTC 2016


Hello Mr. Benton,

I said thank you many times and have always been very courteous, and I do not have a problem donating some money your way.  Where would I do that?  I do take offense to some of the way things are worded and stuff like "LMFAO", etc., etc.  I have not done anything like that to you, or anyone else on this list.  I will admit to your points as follows:

- never apply a major upgrade to a critical system without testing it in a lab first (CORRECT--did not do that)
- have a rollback plan (CORRECT--and I do, I just thought I would persevere and get 5.x.x working with the help of the great people here)
- instead of upgrading an ancient server, build a new one and shift the email (this is not an ancient server)
- do not blame me (I never blamed you...I didn't even know who you were until this email)

"I do not mean to sound cold or harsh, but you are essentially bitching at me because this free product created a lot of challenges for you during the upgrade process. It appears that you did not have a plan to roll back in the event of an upgrade failure. That is not on me."  

This is not correct, because I did immediately roll back to using just sendmail to process mail.  The only issue was a swarm of SPAM, because Mailscanner wasn't scanning.  Wolfgang kindly helped me with that, by providing the script that the install had somehow deleted off my system.  Better to have the SPAM than no email at all.  

I am very sorry if you feel that I was "bitching at you."  And yes, you do sound very cold and very harsh.  I don't feel that I deserve this at all.  As I've said MANY times in these messages, I had been using MailScanner for more than 10+ years, and never had a single issue ever, during an install.  That softened me up.  I am so sorry for that.  I had no idea that Julian was no longer working with it...again, I am so sorry.  I also contributed to him many times, and purchased his book.  I have no problem paying for your services!  

As a very seasoned programmer (just not PHP or Perl...I am 60-years old and worked with Phoenix Technologies on the BIOS, using Assembly and C++), I feel that I would be amiss if I did not mention a few things about the install process.  Also, it doesn't appear as if I am the only person who is having the same issues.  I truly thought that I was trying to help.  Thank you for shaming me into submission.

In conclusion, I very surprised at this kind of response from a professional community.  I believe that my interaction here has led to helping others solve the same issues with the install process.  You have very much shamed me quite well here, and I promise that I will go away and try my very best to continue to work on my issues on my own.  As I consider myself a very decent, and good, professional person, where may I contribute some money to you and your family sir?

Thank you again for all of your help.  I will go away for now, and leave all of you alone.  I am so sorry to have made all of you so angry. 

Thank you again for all of your hard work, Paul Scott


-----Original Message-----
From: MailScanner [mailto:mailscanner-bounces+sales=edenusa.com at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf Of Jerry Benton
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2016 10:34 PM
To: MailScanner Discussion <mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info>
Subject: RE: Upgrade Wrecks MailScanner

Ok, enough.

I took over the MailScanner project in January 2014. At that point it had largely been abandoned. The code was woefully outdated and the structure was just plain wrong according to FHS. I updated everything to work with the modern versions of Perl. I thinned out a lot crap. I lterally put MONTHS of work into this.

I am also the sole financial supporter this project. To date, I have received $220 in donations. This is over almost 3 years. For the most part, I do pretty much everything. Mark helps me with sanity checks, my crap Perl skills, and proposes fixes on MailScanner items. A couple of times some community users have helped research some issues.
(Thanks BTW)

The upside to using open source software is that it is free. The downside is that you need to be pretty adept at what you are doing.
This is why there are a lot of companies that take open source software and build commercial products from them. You are paying them to make it simple. I paid $3000 for a Synology NAS that has software in it that I wrote. That’s right, I paid for a product that contains my own work. Go figure.

No, everything is not documented in spectacular fashion. This is mainly because I have to do other things so my family can do things like eat and have a place to live. I put a lot of time into MailScanner because I use it in my own commercial product. That seems pretty damn fair on my side of the equation considering most companies do not contribute jack shit to the open source product they profit from.

If MailScanner v5 does not work with MailWatch, which I know it does, I really do not care. Those guys have a commercial product that also makes money off the work that I do. Do they donate to the project?
Hell no. I have never even had a conversation with them.

I do not mean to sound cold or harsh, but you are essentailly bitching at me because this free product created a lot of challenges for you during the upgrade process. It appears that you did not have a plan to roll back in the event of an upgrade failure. That is not on me.
You said you prepared for the upgrade. You did not. For future reference:

- never apply a major upgrade to a critical system without testing it in a lab first
- have a rollback plan
- instead of upgrading an ancient server, build a new one and shift the email
- do not blame me

If you would have done any one of those first three (and always the 4th), this entire process would have been a lot less urgent and would not have impacted your operations.



-
Jerry Benton
www.mailborder.com
+1 - 844-436-6245


-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Scott <sales at edenusa.com>
Reply: MailScanner Discussion <mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info>
Date: October 13, 2016 at 9:17:44 PM
To: MailScanner Discussion <mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info>
Subject:  RE: Upgrade Wrecks MailScanner

> Actually, not sure what this means ("Good. Throw it out and start over.") Care to explain?
>
> And insofar as your "do more research and preparation before 
> upgrading", I did exactly that, and nowhere was there any great deal 
> of information available which would prepare anybody for what is actually happening to them. How would you suggest preparing for this?
> And just because someone decides to bump something up from 4.85 to 
> 5.x.x, is that an excuse for breaking so much of it? Not too much in 
> change logs alluding to the issues which have been happening to a lot of us out here.
>
> In conclusion, I am not trying to make excuses for myself, nor should 
> anyone else. I am VERY THANKFUL for all of the assistance I received 
> from everybody on this forum. Without you guys, I would have probably been fired from my job.
>
> THANK YOU!
> Paul Scott
> https://www.edenusa.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner 
> [mailto:mailscanner-bounces+sales=edenusa.com at lists.mailscanner.info]
> On Behalf Of McMannis
> Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2016 6:03 PM
> To: 'MailScanner Discussion'
> Subject: RE: Upgrade Wrecks MailScanner
>
> Good. Throw it out and start over.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner
> [mailto:mailscanner-bounces+mcmannis=intergate.com at lists.mailscanner.i
> nfo]
> On Behalf Of Mark Sapiro
> Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2016 4:19 PM
> To: mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info
> Subject: Re: Upgrade Wrecks MailScanner
>
> On 10/13/2016 01:35 PM, Paul Scott wrote:
> >
> > Auto: Found virus scanners: clamavmodule LibClamAV Warning:
> > **************************************************
> > LibClamAV Warning: *** The virus database is older than 7 days! *** 
> > LibClamAV Warning: *** Please update it as soon as possible. *** 
> > LibClamAV Warning: 
> > **************************************************
> > LibClamAV Warning:
> ***********************************************************
> > LibClamAV Warning: *** This version of the ClamAV engine is outdated.
> ***
> > LibClamAV Warning: *** DON'T PANIC! Read 
> > http://www.clamav.net/support/faq *** LibClamAV Warning:
> > ***********************************************************
>
>
> Try using yum or whatever to install/update clamav, clamd and freshclam.
> Also, running clamd is much preferred to the clamav module. If clamd 
> is running, Virus Scanners = auto will use it.
>
>
> > 4. And every now and again, I get these kind of error messages in 
> > the
> maillog:
> > Oct 13 13:07:44 mail MailScanner[4773]: Could not open file
> > >/var/spool/MailScanner/incoming/4773/u9DK7gOS005688.header: No such
> > file or directory Oct 13 13:07:44 mail MailScanner[4773]: Cannot 
> > create + lock headers file 
> > /var/spool/MailScanner/incoming/4773/u9DK7gOS005688.header
>
>
>
> What is the owner and group of /var/spool/MailScanner/incoming/, and 
> what user and group are the MailScanner processes running as?
>
>
> > I noticed that there are a few other folks having the same or 
> > similar
> issues as I ran into using the install.sh script. I feel that this is 
> going to become a large support issue, and I feel badly for all of us 
> out here in the world that are running into this problem.
>
>
> I'm sorry for the difficulty that you and others have experienced in 
> upgrading from Mailscanner 4.x.x to 5.x.x. I'm sure there's much room 
> for improvement in the scripts and documentation, but please note that 
> this is not a micro or minor point release upgrade. It is a major 
> version jump. As such you should expect that things will change and do 
> more research and preparation before actually upgrading.
>
> --
> Mark Sapiro The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, 
> California better use your sense - B. Dylan
>
>
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> MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
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