Posts Tagged ‘binary version’

Install simscan on Qmail for better Mail server performance and get around unexisting suid perl in newer Linux Debian / Ubuntu servers

Tuesday, August 18th, 2015

qmail-fixing-clamdscan-errors-and-qq-errors-qmail-binary-migration-few-things-to-check-outclamav_logo-installing-clamav-antivirus-to-scan-periodically-debian-server-websites-for-viruses

I've been stuck with qmail-scanner-queue for a while on each and every new Qmail Mail server installation, I've done, this time it was not different but as time evolves and Qmail and Qmail Scanner Wrapper are not regularly updated it is getting, harder and harder to make a fully functional Qmail on newer Linux server distribution releases.

I know many would argue QMAIL is already obsolete but still I have plenty of old servers running QMAIL whose migration might cause more troubles than just continuing to use QMAIL. Moreover QMAIL once set-upped works like a charm.

I've been recently experiencing severe issues with clamdscan errors and I tried to work around this with compiling and using a suid wrapper, however still the clamdscan errors continued and as qmail-scanner is not actively developed and it is much slower than simscan, I've finally decided to give simscan as a mean to fix the clamdscan errors and thanksfully this worked as a solution.

Here is what I did "rawly" to make simscan work on this install:
 

Make sure simscan is properly installed on Debian Linux 7 or Ubuntu servers and probably (should work) on other Deb based Linuxes by following below steps:
 

a) Configure simscan with following compile time options as root (superuser)

./configure \
–enable-user=qscand \
–enable-clamav \
–enable-clamdscan=/usr/local/bin/clamdscan \
–enable-custom-smtp-reject=y \
–enable-per-domain=y \
–enable-attach=y \
–enable-dropmsg=n \
–enable-spam=y \
–enable-spam-hits=5 \
–enable-spam-passthru=y \
–enable-qmail-queue=/var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue \
–enable-ripmime=/usr/local/bin/ripmime \
–enable-sigtool-path=/usr/local/bin/sigtool \
–enable-received=y


b) Compile it

 

 make && make install-strip

c) Fix any wrong permissions of simscan queue directory

 

chmod g+s /var/qmail/simscan/

chown -R qscand:qscand /var/qmail/simscan/
chmod -R 777 simscan/chown -R qscand:qscand simscan/
chown -R qscand:qscand simscan/

d) Add some additional simscan options (how simscan is how to perform scans)

The restart qmail to make mailserver start using simscan instead of qmail-scanner, run below command (again as root):

echo ":clam=yes,spam=yes,spam_hits=8.5,attach=.vbs:.lnk:.scr:.wsh:.hta:.pif" > /var/qmail/control/simcontrol

 

e) Run /var/qmail/bin/simscanmk in order to convert /var/qmail/control/simcontrol into the /var/qmail/control/simcontrol.cdb database

/var/qmail/bin/simscanmk
/var/qmail/bin/simscanmk -g

f) Modify /service/qmail-smtpd/run to set simscan to be default Antivirus Wrapper Scanner

vim /service/qmail-smtpd/run

I'm using thibs's run script so I've uncommented the line there:

QMAILQUEUE="$VQ/bin/simscan"

Below two lines should stay commented as qmail-scanner is no longer used:

##QMAILQUEUE="$VQ/bin/qmail-scanner-queue"
##QMAILQUEUE="$VQ/bin/qmail-scanner-queue.pl"
export QMAILQUEUE

qmailctl restart
* Stopping qmail-smtpdssl.
* Stopping qmail-smtpd.
* Sending qmail-send SIGTERM and restarting.
* Restarting qmail-smtpd.
* Restarting qmail-smtpdssl.

g) Test whether simscan is properly sending / receiving emails:

echo "Testing Email" >> /tmp/mailtest.txt
env QMAILQUEUE=/var/qmail/bin/simscan SIMSCAN_DEBUG=3 /var/qmail/bin/qmail-inject hipo@my-mailserver.com < /tmp/mailtest.txt

Besides that as I'm using qscand:qscand as a user for my overall Qmail Thibs install I had to also do:

chown -R qscand:qscand /var/qmail/simscan/
chmod -R 777 simscan/
chown -R qscand:qscand simscan/

 

It might be a good idea to also place that lines in /etc/rc.local to auto change permissions on Linux boot, just in case something wents wrong with permissions.

Yeah, I know 777 is unsecure but without this permissions, I was still getting errors, plus the server doesn't have any accounts except the administrator, so I do not worry other system users might sniff on email 🙂

h) Test whether Qmail mail server send / receives fine with simscan

After that I've used another mail server with mail command to test whether mail is received:
 

mail -s "testing email1234" hipo@new-configured-qmail-server.com
asdfadsf
.
Cc:

Then it is necessery to also install latest clamav daemon from source in my case that's on Debian GNU / Linux 7, because somehow the Debian shipped binary version of clamav 0.98.5+dfsg-0+deb7u2 does fail to scan any incoming or outgoing email with error:
 

clamdscan: corrupt or unknown clamd scanner error or memory/resource/perms problem – exit status -1/72057594037927935

So to fix it you will have to install clamav on Debian Linux from source.


Voilla, that's all finally it worked !

Download and Play Apogee’s Raptor (Call of the Shadows) DOS arcade game on GNU / Linux and BSD* with dosbox / Few words on Apogee and Shareware

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

Since its early days dosbox has elolved a lot. For all those who haven't heard of dosbox, it is x86 Free Software Linux / FreeBSD DOS emulator

DosBox supports, almost all the game classics we used top lay in oldschool times when DOS (Disk Operating System ) version was running on top of most personal computer.

The most spread versions of DOS people used to use on their PCs were Novell (DR-DOS) more rarely used, and MS-DOS (The Microsoft DOS ver.).

I'm sometimes being sentimental about the past so I remembered for Raptor Call of the Shadows !

Having a bit of experience with DOSBox to run few DOS games I've decided to give a try with dosbox.

First I have to dig for this shareware, since this game is part of the sharewares, nowdays a binary version of it is freely distributed on the net.
Finding the game however took me about 10 minutes, as most of the download links for Raptor, were either dead or required some kind of registration. After a bit of look I found it on an old torrent with few seeders and succeded downloading.

For the convenience of people who would like to download run the Raptor arcade classic game check here

Nicely Raptor works out of the box directly launched with dosbox emulator.
Dosbox has packages for most Linux distributions.
I personally used it on my Debian Linux so installed via apt:

debian:~# apt-get install dosbox
...

The game works without any dosbox hacks, just download, unarchive and launch with dosbox:

hipo@debian:~$ wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/Raptor_Call_of_The_Shadows_Apogee_arcade.tar.gz
...
hipo@debian:~$ tar -zxvf Raptor_Call_of_The_Shadows_Apogee_arcade.tar.gz
...
hipo@debian:~$ cd Raptor/
hipo@debian:/home/hipo/Raptor$ dosbox rap.exe

Apogee Raptor Screenshot Dosbox Debian linux

Raptor Call of the Shadows main screen linux debian

Dosbox raptor level

People like me 😉 who lived in that glorious times when DOS was a standard for a desktop operating system pretty much like MS Windows is today, certainly remember the awesome games produced by Apogee Software a company later known as 3D Realms

Apogee until this very day remain one of the greatest game creation companies in history of games. 3D Realms played a crucial role in development of PC game industry as well as has a great santimental value to probably million of old school arcade game addicts.

They can be ben undoubtedly can be praised for having created some of the most awesome arcade games for all times.

Some of the early hit games they created you probably know, few of the titles are:

  • Duke Nukem I, II
  • Arctic Adventure
  • Monster Bash
  • Stargunner
  • Commander Keen series
  • Wolfenstein 3D
  • Blake Stone
  • Terminal Velocity (Terminal Reality)
  • Shadow Warrior
  • Death Rally
  • Blood

Apogee was also notable for being a company to had established the so spread mostly during the late 80s up to the early years of the second millenium.

ShareWare model of distribution is an interesting phenomenon, that co-relates more or less with the ideas of Free Software.
The idea of ShareWare games was games are distributed for Free and the end customer (gamer) is asked to pay for a game only if he likes it.

Some of the shareware published games was available for free download and play, however the game was only bundled with only a number of game levels to unlock the rest of the game levels you had to play some money.

The shareware games produced were then freely published and shared via dial up access BBS nodes (A text based Bulletin Board System similar to nowdays Forums).
BBS has historically been the major way of sharing knowledge and exchanging ideas and opinions preceding the massive rise of the WEB.
Today most computer users would probably even haven't heard about BBS, if you like to have a general idea on how BBSes seemed to look dahmer.vistech.net .

ShareWare started to loose speed with the decline of BBS and the emergence of Free Software.

Some of the conceptual ideas of ShareWare found its way in "Open Source & Free Software", and commercial companies like RedHat and SuSE.

If you have tried some other Apogee games with Dosbox on Linux and FreeBSD and you can positively confirm they work it will be great. In theory all of the DOS games of apogee should work fine with dosbox. Any feedback or game recommendations of your favourite games of the DOS years are mostly welcome in comments. I'm curious to hear what was your favourite DOS game. Maybe when I have time I'll prepare a list of my favourite games put them here 😉