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Uninstalling Mailscanner and MSFE

verdon
Hi. I still have ConfigServer's MSFE and Mailscanner running on a server. It is running fine, and I’m sure going to miss it, but I will be doing a hardware and OS refresh this summer. I want to remove those packages from my environment now, so I can explore and tweak alternatives before I move to a fresh server. To that end, I discovered that waytotheweb's GitHub repo is now gone too. That is where the uninstall scripts were. I did find a fork of them on another repo, but I’m not sure I can trust that. I asked chatGPT and received this guidance. < https://chatgpt.com/share/6a099776-d624-83ea-b953-2f610ad33b0e > Does it seem reasonable? On a related note, what other solutions are people using? I've been trying the email component of Immunify360, but with Mailscanner running before it, there's not much for it to do. It has an appalling lack of reporting or control or configuration… I’m a little afraid of depending on it alone. I'd love to hear other experiences.

Comments

8 comments

Date Votes
  • Chris McLennan

    I have a copy of the removal instructions and the original installer file (referenced in the removal instructions). Happy to post the instructions here, but will have to touch base directly regarding the installer file.

    I have a tonne of respect for the Config Server team and the tools they created, MSFE was by far one of the best third party email and spam management tools for cPanel and I hope cPanel considers adapting a similar interface into their platform, as It's been a real shame to lose it.

    1
  • verdon

    Thanks Chris, I echo your opinion on ConfigServer. I used their full commercial service for every server of mine over the last 15 years or so. They will be missed! I'd appreciate seeing whatever you have. You can email me at irony_rays.6w@icloud.com if you prefer.

    1
  • Chris McLennan
    • Edited

    Instructions I have on file are as follows; please note: STEP 1 won't work as the URL is no longer valid - I'll touch base directly regarding the msinstall.tar.gz file
    ------

    Here is how to uninstall Mailscanner completely and reverse the changes we made:

    1. To remove MailScanner and the MailScanner Front-End, run these commands in shell as root:

    cd /root
wget https://download.configserver.com/msinstall.tar.gz
tar -xzf msinstall.tar.gz
cd msinstall/
sh uninstall.sh

    2. Remove the MailScanner-specific SpamAssassin configuration files (in shell as root):

    cd /etc/mail/spamassassin/
rm -fv configserver.cf mailscanner.cf

    3. To remove the MailScanner Configuration icon from cPanel, go to WHM > Packages > Feature Manager. Edit the "disabled" Feature List and check the box for MailScanner Configuration.

    4. Remove the root cron job that runs mscpanel.pl (in shell as root):

    crontab -e

    5. Reset Exim Configuration, in WHM > Exim Configuration Editor > Reset All Configs to Defaults. This is not required.

    6. If you want to re-enable SpamAssassin through cPanel:

    WHM > Tweak Settings > SpamAssassin > tick
    WHM > Service Manager > spamd > tick both boxes
    WHM > Feature Manager > Edit a Feature List > disabled > Edit > Apache SpamAssassin and Apache SpamAssassin Spam Box > untick (if ticked)
    WHM > Feature Manager > Edit Feature List - edit any feature lists that you want to allow access to the SpamAssassin configuration in cPanel

    0
  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    verdon - I'm not seeing any obvious issues with their links here:

    https://github.com/wnpower/waytotheweb-scripts/tree/main/uninstallers/MailScanner

    What URL are you seeing that isn't working at this time?

    0
  • Chris McLennan

    Not sure if anyone might be interested in this, but for this who are- Alain Martini is currently developing MSFE-NG — MailScanner Front-End (Next Generation) over on GitHub - https://github.com/inalto/msfe-ng

    MSFE-NG is a clean-room replacement for the discontinued, proprietary ConfigServer MailScanner Front-End (MSFE). It reads MSFE's old config files so you can migrate, but ships no licensing, no phone-home, and no obfuscation — just maintainable, auditable code.

    Status: v0.0.1 — feature-complete. Installs and cleanly uninstalls, logs mail to MySQL, generates the MailScanner ruleset, and provides both an admin dashboard and an end-user self-service UI. See Roadmap.

    ⚠️ Integration testing on a live cPanel/DirectAdmin + MailScanner host is the recommended next step before production use (see Testing status).

    Might be one worth testing or keeping an eye on!

    0
  • Reginaldo Bray
    • Edited

    Hi.

    I'm setting up a new mail server and i would like to use MSFE-NG, since I used ConfigServer MSFE on my previous server. Has anyone already tested this tool on a WHM/cPanel production server? I'd appreciate your feedback on this.

    Best regards,

    Reginaldo Bray

    0
  • Chris McLennan

    I installed MSFE-NG on a single license cpanel server with MSFE already installed but was unable to get it working. I haven't spent much time troubleshooting, I just switched back to MSFE and will review again when I get some more free time.

    That said- MSFE-NG said everything was OK, all the self tests reported OK but nothing appeared to be writing to the database/email lists - It's like EXIM wasn't sending anything through to MSFE-NG, emails were coming through to my inbox but with no MSFE-NG header changes.


    0
  • Chris Matthews
    • Edited

    After an exim update, configservers MSFE screwed up with hundreds of emails queuing up, 'Spool file not found ' errors.

    so we Installed MSFE-NG version 0.35 and all appears to be working OK so far.

    0

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