Email Piping With Directadmin

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

Hi, All!

 

Anyone know how to get email piping to work.

 

I know it's more difficult with DA than with other panels and I've been playing with forwarder in DA to get it to work, but it's not cooperating. I used to have it work perfectly in WHMCS, but for whatever reason, it's not working in Blesta.

 

I'm not getting an email bounce either. The mail just goes away and I don't know where it goes. It doesn't even show up in the maillog.

 

Any ideas.

 

I'm using this as my forwarder:

 

"|/usr/bin/php -q /home/billing/domains/my.hostingdifferent.com/public_html/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php plugin/support_manager/ticket_pipe/index/1/"

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

I'm getting closer. I'm getting the following error in a returned mail:

 

 /home/billing/domains/my.hostingdifferent.com/public_html/plugins/support_manager/pipe.php

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

I have it chmod to 755

[Michael]

Pipe should be 777

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

Tried that too!

[Michael]

Does your cron use usr/bin/php or something like /usr/local/bin/php?

[Paul]

755 should work, that's executable for all. You could try chmod +x pipe.php to be certain, but that's probably not the issue.

Where does DA store the forwarder file? You've probably seen this page http://docs.blesta.com/display/user/Support+Manager#SupportManager-EmailPiping

 

On a fresh CentOS/RHEL install, it would be in /etc/aliases. This page from the docs gives an example of what to use. Also, you may need to create the symlinks as described in /etc/smrsh to php and pipe.php.

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

I've done those and still I get the error about not being able to open pipe.php.

 

When I searched this forum, I had this same problem when I first installed Blesta when 3.0 came out and it was never resolved. 

 

Apparently, I may not be able to do this with DirectAdmin. 

 

I never had to do this much work with WHMCS to get it to work. I didn't have to edit any of my server files or anything else. The biggest issue I had with setting it up in whmcs was that the docs said to use the php command without the -q and that is required in DA. Once we figured that out, everything worked.

 

Scott

[Paul]

What's your path to PHP? Is there a hashbang in pipe.php that matches?

 

Really there should be no difference between Blesta and anyone else in terms of piping. pipe.php needs to receive the email as standard input, if it does, then it should work.

 

The only other thing is that Blesta requires mailparse, so you should verify that mailparse is available both in your CLI and through your web server.

[Bloory]

Is thee any way to fetch mail without mailparse?

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

Mailparse is installed. I added the hashbang.

 

The error that I keep getting is cannot open the pipe.php file. That usually is a permissions issue, but it's chmod to 777.

 

/usr/bin/php and /usr/local/bin/php

[Paul]

Is thee any way to fetch mail without mailparse?

 

No, mailparse is required. "pecl install mailparse" will usually do it.

 

Mailparse is installed. I added the hashbang.

 

The error that I keep getting is cannot open the pipe.php file. That usually is a permissions issue, but it's chmod to 777.

 

/usr/bin/php and /usr/local/bin/php

 

via a shell, "php -i | grep mailparse" shows it's available? Anything in /var/log/maillog (or your mail log pertaining to this?) I've seen cases where 777 causes issues, try 755 instead.

 

You may try piping an a copy of the email directly to pipe.php.. ie

 

 

php /path/to/pipe.php < file.txt

 

Where file.txt is a copy of the email, including headers. To get this, send yourself an email, view the source, and copy the entire source to the file.txt file. If you must, change the to address to the proper department.

 

This will bypass the mail server entirely.

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

# php -i | grep mailparse

mailparse

mailparse support => enabled

mailparse.def_charset => us-ascii => us-ascii

 

 

That's when I get when I check for mailparse.

 

Trying 755.

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

Still nothing and nothing in maillog either.

 

Installing PHP IMAP and going that route. It shouldn't be this hard. LOL

[LukesUbuntu]

maybe not same issue but i did have a user group issue when mail piping to a php file a while back

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

If I can't get this to work, either pop3 or piping, I'm going to either have to use another support system or I'll have to go back to whmcs--even worse.

 

I hate having a separate support system than my billing as it causes the clients to have multiple logins and I'd prefer NOT to go back to whmcs, but I do need a solution that works and it shouldn't be this hard. As I've said, I didn't have to work this hard setting up piping with whmcs. And clients hate it when they can't just email in their tickets. UGH!

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

It's got to be something stupid!

[Michael]

I wish I could help more but I've never used DirectAdmin, this is a bit old but it sounds like what we do on InterWorx: http://forum.directadmin.com/showthread.php?t=1092

[Paul]

Are you having trouble with POP or IMAP also?

 

If pipe.php is getting the email via stdin, as with any email piping, it should work. Try what I suggested with sending the output of an email in a text file to pipe.php. If that works, you've narrowed down the issue to the mail server.

 

If worse comes to worse, and you're willing to give me access.. I'm happy to dig into it and see what I can find out.

 

Edit, also enable error reporting in config/blesta.php. piping a text file via a shell to pipe.php, or a bounce email may then have more information about the error.

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

I can't do pop or imap as php imap is not supported in directadmin.

 

I tried piping directly and I got nothing. No error, but no piping either.

 

I'll check the error log and see. Otherwise, I'm giving up. I don't want you to have to work on my server. That's not fair.

 

@licensecart, I've read through those threads on DA and that was BEFORE they had piping abilities. It has to be something simple that I'm missing. It was never this difficult with whmcs or even clientexec when I was testing them. My alias file is automatically updated when I forward an email to the correct location in the panel.

[Paul]

I don't mind taking a look at it. It's a good idea to install Blesta on a VPS though, separate from vulnerable shared hosting accounts. If you have a fresh VPS with say CentOS 6.x on it with root access I can get it working for you.

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

It's on a VPS, but it's not a fresh one. LOL It does run on CentOS with DirectAdmin.

 

The only accounts on this server are my own, though there are a few, but all low load.

[Jonathan]

Since the problem here is DA and not Blesta, why threaten to drop Blesta which is a far superior product to the alternative you claim, WHMCS?  Why not drop the problem - DirectAdmin, and go for a panel that it will work cleanly with, say cPanel?

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

I don't think that WHMCS is better, not by far. I love DA and I can get piping to work with WHMCS, Clientexec, and others. It just won't work with Blesta. I don't want to leave Blesta, but at the same time, I need piping to work. It seems to be a problem with DA and Blesta, not DA and piping. There's something with the way it's implemented in Blesta that is causing a problem. With everyone else, I put the piping command in a forwarder and voila, it works.

 

And I think that cPanel is far inferior to DirectAdmin. I hate cPanel.

 

Right now, I'm looking at alternative support systems so that I can still use Blesta.

[Michael]

I don't think that WHMCS is better, not by far. I love DA and I can get piping to work with WHMCS, Clientexec, and others. It just won't work with Blesta. I don't want to leave Blesta, but at the same time, I need piping to work. It seems to be a problem with DA and Blesta, not DA and piping. There's something with the way it's implemented in Blesta that is causing a problem. With everyone else, I put the piping command in a forwarder and voila, it works.

 

And I think that cPanel is far inferior to DirectAdmin. I hate cPanel.

 

Right now, I'm looking at alternative support systems so that I can still use Blesta.

 

You could give Paul access or go to DirectAdmin and ask them for help.

[hostingDifferent-Scott]

I PMd him last night, but haven't received a response as of yet.