Category Archives: Bugs

SMTP authorization does not work on Plesk 11

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I was having this issue today and wasted quite a lot of time trying to figure out what was going wrong. The client’s server was running Plesk 11 and had SMTP running with port 25 open. IMAP was working flawlessly but Outlook kept returning the login box with “Login Failed” error pointing towards wrong credentials. But I knew the password was correct so I started haunting.

I logged in as root user and checked the mail log file at:
/usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog

And there I found a lot of warnings but one stood out:

postfix/smtpd[31280]: warning: SASL authentication failure: realm changed: authentication aborted
postfix/smtpd[31280]: warning: SASL DIGEST-MD5 authentication failed: authentication failure
postfix/smtpd[31280]: warning: SASL authentication failure: cannot connect to saslauthd server: No such file or directory
postfix/smtpd[31280]: warning: SASL LOGIN authentication failed: generic failure

“No such file or directory”? Interesting.

I did a quick edit of the smtpd.conf by running:
nano /usr/lib64/sasl2/smtpd.conf

And there I saw the problem. The saslauthd_path and sql_database were wrong paths:

pwcheck_method: auxprop saslauthd
auxprop_plugin: sql_sqlite3
saslauthd_path: /postfix/private/plesk_saslauthd
mech_list: DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 PLAIN LOGIN
auto_transition: yes
sql_engine: sqlite3
sql_hostnames: localhost
sql_database: /postfix/plesk/passwd.db
sql_select: SELECT `%p` FROM domains d, users u WHERE u.name='%u' and d.name='%r' and d.status=0 and u.status=0 and u.dom_id=d.id
sql_verbose: yes
log_level: 9

I just added the “/var/spool/postfix” before the paths and the correct file looks like:

pwcheck_method: auxprop saslauthd
auxprop_plugin: sql_sqlite3
saslauthd_path: /var/spool/postfix/private/plesk_saslauthd
mech_list: DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 PLAIN LOGIN
auto_transition: yes
sql_engine: sqlite3
sql_hostnames: localhost
sql_database: /var/spool/postfix/plesk/passwd.db
sql_select: SELECT `%p` FROM domains d, users u WHERE u.name='%u' and d.name='%r' and d.status=0 and u.status=0 and u.dom_id=d.id
sql_verbose: yes
log_level: 9

Saved and got out, restarted the postfix:
/etc/init.d/postix restart

And hit the Send/Receive button and guess what… it worked! Please share this post and leave a comment if this worked for you.

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Stop Dr. Web Antivirus Update Emails

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After months of painful emails about Dr. Web updates, I finally found a solution:

Log in as root (or you can use sudo) and open /etc/drweb/drweb32.ini:

Look for:
CronSummary = Yes

And change it to:
CronSummary = No

Do a restart for the Dr. Web daemon by (add sudo in the beginning if not using root):
/etc/init.d/drwebd restart
That should do it! Seems so easy once you know it.
Please do leave a comment if this works for you 🙂

The problem:

Just a bit of background about the problem. I have been using Plesk 8.4 and been really happy with it. I’ve gone through all the versions but the latest one Plesk 9.3 had been sending me these weird emails:

From: MAILER-DAEMON@example.com
To: anonymous@example.com
Subject: failure notice

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at example.com.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.

<drweb@example.com>:

— Below this line is a copy of the message.

Return-Path: <anonymous@example.com>
Received: (qmail 22133 invoked by uid 100); 20 Mar 2010 19:00:10 +0000
Date: 20 Mar 2010 19:00:10 +0000
Message-ID: <20100320190010.22131.qmail@example.com>
From: root@example.com (Cron Daemon)
To: drweb@example.com
Subject: Cron <drweb@vps> /opt/drweb/update.pl
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated
X-Cron-Env: <shell=/bin/sh>
X-Cron-Env: <home=/var/drweb>
X-Cron-Env: <path=/usr/bin:/bin> X-Cron-Env: <logname=drweb>
X-Cron-Env: <user=drweb>

Dr.Web (R) update details:
Update server: http://update.msk5.drweb.com/unix/500
Update has begun at Sat Mar 20 19:00:02 2010
Update has finished at Sat Mar 20 19:00:10 2010

Following files has been updated:
/var/drweb/bases/drwtoday.vdb
/var/drweb/bases/dwntoday.vdb
/var/drweb/bases/dwrtoday.vdb
/var/drweb/updates/timestamp

And you usually get one of these an hour! Thats 24 a day! Crazyyyy!

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Realtek’s network controller deep sleep mode issue

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As I’ve noticed a fair bit of visitors interested in my post of Windows 7 and Network Controller Deep Sleep Mode problem, I thought I should write a “clean” version of the post (basically the fix for the problem minus my ramblings 🙂 )

The problem starts when the computer goes into sleep/standby mode, a few components of the PC including the network controller (or adapter) are turned off. The issue occurs when the PC wakes up and power to everything is restored. The network controller doesn’t come on and as per Realtek installation message:

The Realtek Network Adapter/Controller was not found.
If Deep Sleep Mode enabled Please Plug the Cable

The best fix is to reset the motherboard and the best way to reset your motherboard is to remove your RAM chips. Leave them out for some time (in my case 30 seconds) and put them back in. And that is all! The motherboard will be reset and the network controller will come out of deep sleep mode!

Note: If this doesn’t work, leave the RAM out for good 10 minutes. Leaving the RAM out longer has worked for some people (see comments below).

Note 2: For laptops, removing the battery for 5-10 minutes has worked for a few.

Note 3: If nothing works, turn off the system and plug in a external hard drive (or a USB thumb drive) and then turn the computer on. Once on the desktop, Windows will try to install the external hardware. This, in some cases, has worked and wakes up the network controller.

Note 4: Some people have reported that “Loading Default Settings” in the BIOS solves the issue as well. You will need to go into the BIOS at start up by pressing the Delete key (can be F2 or some other, please check the message at the start of the screen). Once in BIOS, you can press F10 to “Load Default Settings” (If you don’t see that, look for a button saying that. It is usually around the “Save & Exit” Button). Once loaded, hit “Save & Exit”. This will restart your computer and some people have reported this fixes the issue.

Once you have it working, to make sure the network controller doesn’t go into sleep mode again, try this:

  1. Open Device Manager by:
    1. Go to Start
    2. Click Control Panel
    3. Choose System and Security
    4. Click Device Manager (under System)
  2. Open Network Controller properties by:
    1. Double-click Network adapters to expand it
    2. Double-click the Realtek Network Controller
  3. Turn off Deep Sleep mode by:
    1. Choose the Power Management tab
    2. Untick “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”

Doing this will make sure the network controller is not put in to sleep mode till someone fixes the issue!

Finally, if something does work you please post the Motherboard/Laptop model and the method that worked to help others!

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AddThis, Internet Explorer and JavaScript

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While working with Internet Explorer 7, I got this error:

Object doesn't support this property or method
Line: 2
Char: 13907
URI: addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js

The thing that hurt more was, Chrome and Firefox were behaving properly. I spent some time searching the error but found nothing interesting. I gave up on that front and decided to have a peek in the AddThis JavaScript.

A bit more look around, I found something very interesting. IE7 has some scoping issue and it was picking up ‘my’ variable instead of AddThis counterpart (in my case it was variable called “c” that I had declared in my own JavaScript that was causing the problem).

Change the variable in your own JavaScript code to anything else and we all can live happily ever after.

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