Free cPanel MailScanner Installer

Through our experience of installing, configuring and upgrading MailScanner for many clients we have decided to publish our scripts that can be used to:

• Install MailScanner
• Upgrade an existing MailScanner installation (that resides in /usr/mailscanner/)
• Upgrade an existing MailScanner installation (and use a clean installation of the files)
• Uninstall MailScanner

For upgrades and uninstallation, this installer will only work with MailScanner installations from this installer.

The installer configures MailScanner with sensible options that will minimize impact on server performance. Do be aware, through, that high email traffic volumes will inevitably cost something in server performance. There are a few additional steps that you can take to minimize this:

• Don't use the Default Address (this will help limit exposure to dictionary attacks). Instead create Forwarders to your Mail Accounts for all addresses that you actually use. Do note that if you do this the main account email address will no longer work (quirk of cPanel). To use it, you need to create an actual Mail account called username@yourdomain.com and use that for POP3 access.
• Use :fail: instead of :blackhole: for your Default or any other Address where you want delivery to fail. This causes email delivery to stop at an early stage (RCPT) before the email actually gets onto your server.

While we're not aware of any significant bugs, there's no guarantee or warranty provided with the script. We also do not provide any support for it. If you require support and contact us, there may be a charge for any work or advice provided. If you want support, we offer a cheap package to do it all for you, and more, over here.

This script has only been tested on supported releases of Redhat or CentOS Linux. There is no support for running on servers running Trustix, FreeBSD, SUSE or any OS that is EOL/obsolete or unsupported by cPanel (e.g. RedHat 9, Fedora,etc).

Script installation

1. Login to your root account on your server via SSH
2. Download the installer, expand it and go into it:

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

3. Follow the instructions in the INSTALL.txt file
4. Please note that the script uses a stable version of MailScanner which might not be the very latest from the developer
5. Once installed/upgraded/uninstalled make sure that both MailScanner is running correctly and that exim is sending and receiving emails:

   tail -f /var/log/maillog
   tail -f /var/log/exim_mainlog
   

6. Subscribe to our blog to be notified about updates

That's it. If you don't feel confident doing any of this yourself, or if you get into a horrible mess, we offer a cheap package to do it all for you, and more, over here.