Recommended Spam Monitor Script (MailMon)
I thought I'd share my opinion with you about a new script I just bought. (No I'm not affiliated with it in any way)
For anyone who wants to keep a closer eye on their outgoing mail service this is for you. I run a Cpanel server, recent updates in V6 allow for SMTP quota limits so users can't send out tons of email. An important feature missing is not monitoring SMTP but sendmail itself.
Sendmail is used for server side scripts such as PHP and Perl.
The problem with sendmail based scripts is that we have no way of seeing what script is sending out email or what user for that matter.
I found a script called MailMon (http://webhosting-tools.com/view.cgi/MailMon) which does just that.
It logs everything to a text file and MySQL database that is sent through sendmail - username/timestamp and the full path and script used to send the mail.
It also features quota limits and notifications when those limits are hit - email the admin for example.
Purchasing it went well - I used the Reg.net link (the Paypal one was broken). I was emailed the link to download the script seconds after my order was processed and I began following the readme.
After messing around with the config file and replacing sendmail symbolic link with this script no email was going out anymore. I couldn't figure out the problem after changing the config file 20 times it still wasn't working... arrrgggg!! Note: If you use the option: chattr +i sendmail and want to edit sendmail afterwards you MUST first do: chattr -i sendmail (this unlocks the file for editing)
So think outside the box - I looked to my error_log from Apache which gave me the line # for the error. I was missing a ";"!
After that was fixed everyone went perfect. It logs the files as it should to the MySQL database and the text file with username, timestamp and full path to the script being used.
Now I feel much more confident with my clients sendmail scripts. The cost and time to setup this nice handy tool are minimal and should be on every admins must have script list
Cheers!
