Here is how to quickly configure Awstats to take profit of your Qmail log files…

First of all, you need to convert rour /var/log/mail.log file to make it readable to Awstats (supposing you’re using Qmail and Vpopmail from Dotdeb and Awstats from Debian’s official repositories).

Hopefully, a tool is provided with the awstats package : /usr/share/doc/awstats/examples/maillogconvert.pl

You can take a look at its output by executing the following command :

/usr/share/doc/awstats/examples/maillogconvert.pl vadmin /var/log/mail.log 

(vadmin is here to consider the Vpopmail’s virtualdomain translation)

Great! We now just have to configure awstats to produce useful reports. Here is a sample configuration file (name it /etc/awstats/awstats.mail.conf, for example)… Please note the space after the pipe :

LogFile="/usr/share/doc/awstats/examples/maillogconvert.pl vadmin /var/log/mail.log | "
LogType=M
LogFormat="%time2 %email %email_r %host %host_r %method %url %code %bytesd"
SiteDomain="localhost"
HostAliases="127.0.0.1 @/etc/qmail/rcpthosts"
LevelForBrowsersDetection=0 # 0 disables Browsers detection.
LevelForOSDetection=0 # 0 disables OS detection.
LevelForRefererAnalyze=0 # 0 disables Origin detection.
LevelForRobotsDetection=0 # 0 disables Robots detection.
LevelForSearchEnginesDetection=0 # 0 disables Search engines detection.
LevelForKeywordsDetection=0 # 0 disables Keyphrases/Keywords detection.
LevelForFileTypesDetection=0 # 0 disables File types detection.
ShowSummary=HB
ShowMonthStats=HB
ShowDaysOfMonthStats=HB
ShowDaysOfWeekStats=HB
ShowHoursStats=HB
ShowDomainsStats=0
ShowHostsStats=HBL
ShowRobotsStats=0
ShowEMailSenders=HBML
ShowEMailReceivers=HBML
ShowSessionsStats=0
ShowPagesStats=0
ShowFileTypesStats=0
ShowOSStats=0
ShowBrowsersStats=0
ShowOriginStats=0
ShowKeyphrasesStats=0
ShowKeywordsStats=0
ShowMiscStats=0
ShowHTTPErrorsStats=0
ShowSMTPErrorsStats=1

Now, just add this line to /etc/cron.d/awstats to compute your logfiles every 10 minutes:

0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * root [ -x /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl ] && /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -config=mail -update &>/dev/null

(Let’s enjoy a 10-minutes break or brew a good coffee, waiting for the stats to be calculated…)

Your mailserver’s statistics will shortly be available at this URL : http://yourserver/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=mail.

The /etc/init.d/vpopmail script has been updated to launch simultaneously :

• the (enabled by default) POP3 server
• the (disabled by default) POP3-SSL server
• the (disabled by default) Vpopmaild server

depending on the settings in /etc/vpopmail/options.

• instead of a checkbox to enable/disable spam filtering on pop accounts, there is now a list to chose what to do (no filtering, marking spams, deleting spams, learn spam, learn ham). This allow anyone to easily train your bayesian filters.
• Spamassassin is now recommanded and will replace bogofilter in a near future
• Clamassassin replaces clamfilter.pl due to performance issues. Please DO update the /etc/procmailrc-* files during the upgrade to ensure virus are scanned.

Then, this article will show you how to build packages from your favorite PECL extensions in a strict Debian way, using the dh-make-php package.

Imagine we want to package the Fileinfo extension for PHP5…

First, install all the needed packages (libmagic-dev is only needed here to build Fileinfo) :

# apt-get install dh-make-php php5-dev build-essential libmagic-dev

Then, export some needed environment variables, download the package

# export DEBFULLNAME="Guillaume Plessis"
# export DEBEMAIL="gui@php.net"
# pecl download fileinfo
downloading Fileinfo-1.0.4.tgz ...
Starting to download Fileinfo-1.0.4.tgz (5,835 bytes)
.....done: 5,835 bytes
File /tmp/Fileinfo-1.0.4.tgz downloaded

Ok, let’s summon the magical dh-make-pecl command with the appropriate arguments :

# dh-make-pecl --only 5 Fileinfo-1.0.4.tgz
Creating debian source package: php-fileinfo-1.0.4
Upstream is: Ilia Alshanetsky
Guessing Maintainer: Guillaume Plessis

No error message… Great! dh-make-pecl did its job, e.g. unarchived the tarball and created the php-fileinfo-1.0.4/debian/ subdirectory that contains all the packaging stuff.
“–only 5” restricts the building process to PHP5 packages (PHP4 is obsolete!)

Let’s build the package!

# cd php-fileinfo-1.0.4/
# ./debian/rules binary
xsltproc --nonet --novalid debian/changelog.xsl package.xml > debian/Changelog
touch build-stamp
dh_testdir
...
dh_md5sums
dh_builddeb
dpkg-deb: building package `php5-fileinfo' in `../php5-fileinfo_1.0.4-1_i386.deb'.

That’s it! Let’s take a look at the content of the package…

# dpkg -c ../php5-fileinfo_1.0.4-1_i386.deb
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/lib/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/lib/php5/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/lib/php5/20060613+lfs/
-rw-r--r-- root/root     10296 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/lib/php5/20060613+lfs/fileinfo.so
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/share/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/share/doc/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/
-rw-r--r-- root/root       202 2008-09-20 10:09 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/README.Debian
-rw-r--r-- root/root        26 2004-02-13 01:06 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/CREDITS
-rw-r--r-- root/root      3466 2008-09-20 10:09 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/copyright
-rw-r--r-- root/root       159 2008-09-20 10:09 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/changelog.Debian.gz
-rw-r--r-- root/root       865 2005-11-24 23:07 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/fileinfo.php
-rw-r--r-- root/root       149 2008-09-20 10:10 ./usr/share/doc/php5-fileinfo/changelog.gz

and its metadata :

# dpkg -I ../php5-fileinfo_1.0.4-1_i386.deb
 new debian package, version 2.0.
 size 12740 bytes: control archive= 4848 bytes.
     940 bytes,    31 lines   *  config               #!/bin/sh
     607 bytes,    20 lines      control
     522 bytes,     7 lines      md5sums
    1218 bytes,    58 lines   *  postinst             #!/bin/sh
     206 bytes,     8 lines   *  postrm               #!/bin/sh
    1773 bytes,    63 lines   *  prerm                #!/bin/sh
    8758 bytes,    67 lines      templates
 Package: php5-fileinfo
 Version: 1.0.4-1
 Section: web
 Priority: optional
 Architecture: i386
 Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.6-6), libmagic1, debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, php5 | php5-cli
 Installed-Size: 100
 Maintainer: Guillaume Plessis
 Source: php-fileinfo
 Description: Fileinfo module for PHP 5
  libmagic bindings
  .
  This extension allows retrieval of information regarding vast
  majority of file.
  This information may include dimensions, quality, length etc...
  .
  Additionally it can also be used to retrieve the mime type for a
  particular
  file and for text files proper language encoding.
  .

Great job! Now install the package and enjoy…

For more information and specific needs, take a look at “dh-make-pecl” and “man dh-make-pecl“.

For more information, read the official Changelog.

You can : 

• read the press announce
• sign or comment the petition
• spread the word
• so many other things to fight those absurd patents…

Volatile is now part of the Debian project and will be activated by default on Debian Lenny. Its goal is to provide up-to-date packages of some specific pieces of software (ClamAV, Spamassassin for example). Please use it instead of Dotdeb for your mail-filtering packages.

By default, Qmail listens to all the available IP address on the machine (0.0.0.0). It is possible to change this behaviour to bind Qmail to a specific IP.

We suppose that you are using Qmail from Dotdeb and launching it using the provided init script, /etc/init.d/qmail. Just edit it and change these lines :

          sh -c "start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --user qmaild \
          --pidfile /var/run/tcpserver_smtpd.pid --make-pidfile \
          --exec /usr/bin/tcpserver -- -H -P -R -l 0 \
          -u `id -u qmaild` -g `id -g nobody` -x /etc/tcp.smtp.cdb 0 smtp \
          $rblsmtpd /usr/sbin/qmail-smtpd 2>&1 \
          | $logger &"

by those ones :

          sh -c "start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --user qmaild \
          --pidfile /var/run/tcpserver_smtpd.pid --make-pidfile \
          --exec /usr/bin/tcpserver -- -H -P -R -l 0 \
          -u `id -u qmaild` -g `id -g nobody` -x /etc/tcp.smtp.cdb xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx smtp \
          $rblsmtpd /usr/sbin/qmail-smtpd 2>&1 \
          | $logger &"

(Just replace xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx by your IP address)

Now, when you list your listening dameon, you should see tcpserver listening to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:25 instead of 0.0.0.0:25.

machine# netstat -apn
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State       PID/Program name
tcp        0      0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:25      0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      21175/tcpserver

TCMalloc is faster than the glibc 2.3 malloc (available as a separate library called ptmalloc2) and other mallocs that I have tested. ptmalloc2 takes approximately 300 nanoseconds to execute a malloc/free pair on a 2.8 GHz P4 (for small objects). The TCMalloc implementation takes approximately 50 nanoseconds for the same operation pair.

Its deployment in your LAMP stack can speed up your MySQL servers, since it enhances memory allocation on threaded applications with the downside of larger memory footprints.

Here is how to use it easily…

Installation

First of all, you can install Google Perftools from Dotdeb :

apt-get install libgoogle-perftools0

Then, since the mainstream MySQL packages are not compiled against tcmalloc, you’ll have to trick your OS’ dynamic linker by adding the following line at the top of your /etc/init.d/mysql init script :

export LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/libtcmalloc.so.0"

After relauching your MySQL server using the modified init script, you’ll take profit from tcmalloc’s faster memory allocation.

Results

At the time of writing this article, I didn’t make benchmarks, but some reported that they had a ~15-20% performance gain. Please leave comments about your experience.