[Mimedefang] Pulling my hair out

[Mitch at 0Bits.COM]

Hi Tim,

I can't explain why you get the error when running manually
and why you don't otherwise. Anyhow, did you install the HTML::Parser
module to get over this message ?

Also when you run the mimedefang.pl manually, how long does it take
to parse and spit out the error in syslog ? It looks like you're doing
virus scanning, which may mean you need to increase the timeouts in
your sendmail.cf on the Xmimedefang line to 5m as per the MD docs.

Mitch

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Mimedefang] Pulling my hair out
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 22:57:23 -0600
From: Tim Pushor <timp at crossthread.com>
Reply-To: mimedefang at lists.roaringpenguin.com
To: mimedefang at lists.roaringpenguin.com

Mitch,

Thanks for the advice. This helped get me a little further. For some
reason, HTML::Parser did not install properly. I scripted the install
of  Mimedefang and its various dependancies, and didn't check the output
of the script carefully enough.

The funny thing is that when I added the -k switch and ran mimedefang.pl
manually, I get the following ouput in my system log:

Jul 21 21:36:31 calgw mimedefang.pl[4602]: h6M3Wc3W004565: Attempt to
call append_to_html_part, but HTML::Parser Perl module not installed

Any idea why I don't see these types of messages when I don't run
mimedefang.pl interactively?

So now, when I send a test message with a forbidden attachment (still
using the -k switch and running mimedefang.pl interactively) I get the
expected result (at least in syslog - the message is not delivered, but
I expect that the binary mimedefang does this):

Jul 21 21:38:32 calgw mimedefang.pl[4874]:
MDLOG,h6M3Wc3W004565,bad_filename,testexe.exe,application/x-msdownload,<timp at xxx1.com>,<timp at xxx2.com>
,Blah

But when I remove the -k switch from mimedefang and try, I am still
getting the 'Please try again later' message, with nothing else logged.

any ideas?

BTW Thanks a lot for your reply - its given me another troubleshooting
angle.. MimeDefang seems pretty good, but it should be easier to
troubleshoot.

Tim



Mitch at 0Bits.COM wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Look in the archives for my thread
>
>     MIMEDefang timeouts (again)
>
> David's idea of using the -k flag to mimedefang so it keeps
> the failed directory and message around helped me enormously.
> You could then run mimedefang.pl on the message manually to
> see why it is timing out and use the unix tools (strace/truss)
> to check out where the timeouts were.
>
> In my case it ended up being a downreved/mismatched Unix:Syslog
> perl module, and i was not getting syslog messages except from
> the mimedefang binary itself (like you probably).
>
> Mitch