RELEASE NOTES Ensim WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux (LS) June 6, 2002 These release notes cover new features, product compatibility, system requirements, product features, known issues, and resolved issues of Ensim® WEBppliance™ 3.1 for Linux® (LS). ABOUT WEBPPLIANCE 3.1 FOR LINUX =============================== WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux quickly converts a basic Red Hat® Linux 7.2 server into a robust Web hosting appliance that is easily managed through Web browser-based user interfaces. It is packaged with core Web hosting server applications and features such as a Web server, a mail server, a FTP server, a DNS server, and site security for users. It also includes useful administration tools such as a File Manager to help work with directories and files, a user account manager to maintain the accounts on a domain, and a backup manager to perform data backups. WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux has four different levels of users: the appliance owner, the reseller, the domain owner, and users on the domain. Depending on their role, WEBppliance 3.1 allows users to easily access all the features available to them through separate browser-based user interfaces. The user levels are as follows: - Appliance owner - managed by an Appliance Administrator The appliance level of administration is designed for the hosting provider or reseller who either owns server hardware or has remote access to the server. The Appliance Administrator can perform the following tasks. -- Set up the server with Web hosting capabilities -- Configure the domain server applications for customers -- Create and manage new domains -- Automate frequently performed administrative tasks -- Back up and restore individual sites -- Add Resellers - Reseller - managed by a Reseller Administrator The reseller level of administration is designed for the reseller who wants to set up and manage domains. The Reseller Administrator can perform the following tasks. -- Create and manage new domains -- View, create and modify Service Plans -- List all owned sites - Domain owner - managed by a Site Administrator This level of administration is designed for businesses that want to manage their hosted domains and the services installed on the domains. The Site Administrator can perform the following tasks. -- Set up security features for an entire domain or just an individual Web site -- Manage the user accounts on an entire domain or an individual Web site -- Set up protected directories on the Apache Web server -- Set up and manage domain email and FTP features -- Work with directories and files -- View traffic reports -- Back up and restore domain files - User account holder or subscriber - managed by a User Administrator The user account level of administration is designed for a user account holder or subscriber of a domain who is assigned an user account. The User Administrator can perform the following tasks. -- Maintain account contact information -- Set up email services and access email messages over the Internet -- Publish Web site content -- Back up and restore data NEW FEATURES ============ -- RESELLER ADMINISTRATOR Earlier versions of WEBppliance consisted of three levels (Appliance, Site and User). A new level, the Reseller Administrator level, has been introduced in WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux. Through the Reseller interface, the Reseller Administrator can easily manage Web hosting administrative tasks and set up sites without having to worry about the risk and effort involved in maintaining server hardware and software. -- REPAIR OPTION FOR PROTECTED DIRECTORIES Repair option for protected directories has been introduced in WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux, which is used for the following: - Finding errors in .htaccess files and repairing them - Checking for deleted groups with access to protected directory and repairing the required files -- MULTILINGUAL SUPPORT WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux is internationalized, which means that it supports multiple languages. At each of the four levels (Appliance, Reseller, Site, and User), the user can select the language preference. The language preference is login-based, that is, it lasts as long as the user is logged on. English and German are the two default languages supported by WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux. -- SHARED-SSL DOMAIN IS REACHABLE THROUGH IMPROVED URL In WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux, the shared-SSL domain is reachable (both HTML and cgi-bin) through https://// as well as through https:///~/. -- LANGUAGE PREFERENCE FOR THE SITE REPORTS WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux supports language selection at the domain owner level. Site Administrators can choose the language in which they want the site reports to be generated. Once a language is selected it is used to generate site reports, and the effect is visible the next day. The language preference can be subsequently changed. -- ONLINE HELP IN MULTIPLE LANGUAGES WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux supports online Help in multiple languages. The online Help is accessible through the Help link on the left navigation bar of the WEBppliance 3.1 interface. A Help icon is also present at the top- right hand corner of the individual pages for context sensitive Help. PRODUCT COMPATIBILITY ===================== WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux requires Red Hat Linux 7.2 operating system. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS =================== For the most current system requirements, please refer to "Installing and Setting Up WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux (LS)" located at ftp.ensim.com/download/webppliance/linux/ PRODUCT FEATURES ================ WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux includes the following services: --apache 1.3.22 --sendmail 8.11.6 --proftpd 1.2.4 --bind 9.1.3 --majordomo 1.94.5 --openssl 0.9.6b --frontpage 5.0 --mysql 3.23.41 --imap 2000c --mod_perl 1.24_01 --python 2.2.3 --python2 2.1.3 --perl 5.6.0 --tomcat4 4.0.3 KNOWN ISSUES - COMMON TO THE ENGLISH AND GERMAN VERSIONS ======================================================== This section describes the known issues of WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux. The numbers in parentheses refer to the Ensim Problem Report (PR). -- If the domain name is changed, the Site Administrator for that domain must log out and re-login to have the change in domain name reflected in the current session. (13440) -- Adding a domain fails if the Site Administrator name begins with a number (for example, 123Joe). This is because Linux does not allow group or user names to start with numbers. (13750) -- The Microsoft® FrontPage® password does not get updated when the Site Administrator password is changed. Please ensure that you change your FrontPage password when the Site Administrator password is changed. (13836) -- Having the list owner name same as any of the list leads to the emails moving in a loop. Make sure that the list owner and any of the mailing lists do not have same mailing address. -- Configuring virtual DNS in the WEBppliance 3.1 interface removes an IP address if it already exists in the interface and does not restore the original setting if removed. This can override the system configuration as configured in /etc/sysconfig/ifcfg-ethN:N. In case of single interface eth0, the problem is not immediately apparent as the interface will still respond to the IP address. However, if the virtual DNS is removed from BIND interface, then it is removed from the interface and no longer responds until restarted. (14688) -- Email messages fail to get delivered if domain.com is hosted somewhere else. The workaround is to modify sendmail.cf in the chrooted environment and change # Mailer table (overriding domains) Kmailertable hash -o /etc/mail/mailertable.db # to # Mailer table (overriding domains) Kmailertable hash -o /etc/mail/mailertable2.db Create an empty mailertable2.db and copy /etc/mail/mailertable.db to the chrooted etc/mail/mailertable.db. Now when sendmail chroots in (when using SMTP AUTH), it will use the mailertable.db and know to use virthostmail to deliver the mail. Basically all domains will need to have their mailertable.db updated with every other domain that is on the server. (15008). -- In site configurations, if you disable Vacation AutoResponder, then the users of that site will not be able to use the Email Forwarding feature. In order to enable the users of a site to use Email Forwarding feature, ensure that you do not disable Vacation AutoResponder of that particular site. (13755) -- Installation of WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux will fail if the hostname is localhost.localdomain/IP address 127.0.0.1. Please ensure that the host name is not localhost.localdomain/IP address 127.0.0.1 to successfully install WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux. (14682) -- In WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux, specifying a secondary DNS server in the DNS manager adds it to the allow-transfer {localhost;} in each zone. So, secondry DNS server cannot get zone transfer from WEBppliance 3.1. You have to manually specify this in /usr/lib/opcenter/bind/named_conf_zone.tmpl. (16365) -- After you upgrade, SSH using SSH2 works but SSH using SSH1 fails. Refer to the following example to make SSH using SSH1 work. Example: Instead of ssh -1 -l user@domain.com 1.1.1.1 use ssh -1 -l user#domain.com 1.1.1.1. (16416) -- SquirrelMail and Miva® Merchant™ consume approximately 9 MB and 11 MB of disk space per site, respectively. Please ensure that you have at least 20 MB disk free space, in order to add a site with SquirrelMail and Miva Merchant enabled. (15473) -- Miva Merchant cannot be internationalized. (16133) -- If you log on to MySQL™ as a default user, phpMyAdmin does not accept the Site Administrator password. You have to manually change the MySQL password to the Site Administrator password. (15435) -- Currently, the individual sites' filesystems only include the system locale files for English. Hence, if some system command like mkdir /rmdir/rm fails, then the error message will be displayed in English. This means that the 'Details' window may contain English output from the system commands (like rmdir). (15870) -- Before enabling FrontPage for a site make sure that the document root of the site does not contain .htaccess files, which are not compatible with FrontPage (manually created .htaccess files or the ones created through WEBppliance 3.1 ‘Protect Directories’ interface are not compatible with FrontPage). If the .htaccess files exist they will be renamed as .htaccess.old and the existing protection will be lost. (14637, 14995, 14636 and 15009) -- _vti_cnf is a special directory maintained by FrontPage. The Site Administrator is adviced not to protect this directory using the protect directory interface. (14464) -- In WEBppliance 3.1, if you update the domain name of a site the corresponding Apache Web Server name does not get updated automatically. You have to do this manually. (12158) At the Appliance Administrator Interface level, you must change the Web Server name entry in order to reflect on the new site name. At the Command Line Interface level, you must run the following command: # /usr/local/bin/EditVirtDomain -s site -c ipinfo,namebased=0,ipaddrs=\[1.2.3.4\],nbaddrs=\[\] -c siteinfo,domain=newsitename -c apache,webserver=newsitename site -- The individual sites do not currently have the locale files for all languages. Hence, some system commands like mkdir, rm, etc., which run at the site level will generate the output messages in English if the command fails. This means that in the Details window, after any operation at the site-level, you may see English output. (15869) -- You cannot take a backup of a suspended site because the compression utilities (tar and zip) are not available for a suspended site. If you attempt to take a backup of a suspended site, you will receive an email stating that the backup failed for that particular site. (13991) -- Tomcat occupies at least 25 MB of RAM and runs 20 or more processes when it starts. Whenever you start WEBppliance 3.1 for Linux, by default the Tomcat daemon starts too - resulting in slower server performance. The minimum system requirements for Tomcat are as follows: - Processor: Intel Pentium® II - Memory: 512 MB of RAM -- When adding a site at the Appliance or the Reseller level, ensure that the DNS server used by the Appliance Server is reachable and properly configured. (16472) -- The installation of WEBppliance 3.1 fails if Red Hat Linux 7.2 is installed in any language other than English (en_US). During the Red Hat Linux 7.2 installation, in the Language Selection screen, make sure you select English (en_US) as the language for running the installation program. (17072) -- If the Appliance Administrator sets the value of MaxClients in the Apache Configuration to 0, and restarts the Apache Web Server from the command line, then Apache will give the following warning: "WARNING: Require MaxClients > 0, setting to 1". (17054) -- Microsoft FrontPage uses a Web-directory protection mechanism that is incompatible with WEBppliance's .htaccess manager. Enabling FrontPage on site where the existing Document Root already has .htaccess files (*not created by FrontPage*) will cause the existing .htaccess files to be renamed to .htaccess.old. This will effectively override the sites' earlier protection model. The following warning message will be displayed to the Appliance Administrator: "(WARNING): The Document Root for this site contained the following files that were incompatible with FrontPage: <...list of incompatible .htaccess files...> These files have been renamed to .htaccess.old. This effectively overridesthe previous security for this directory. Please inform the Site Administrator about these changes!" The Site Administrator should either not enable FrontPage for the site (the assumption being that if .htaccess files are available, FrontPage may not be required), or enable FrontPage for the site, but be aware that FrontPage uses its own protection model. (16763) KNOWN ISSUES - SPECIFIC TO THE GERMAN VERSION ============================================= This section describes the known issues specific to the German version of WEBppliance 3.1. The numbers in parentheses refer to the Ensim Problem Report (PR). -- The GUI contains some English strings. -- The Reseller service cannot be hidden. This issue can be resolved using the hot fix provided by Ensim. Contact Ensim Support to obtain the hot fix. (17259) -- The GUI displays dots and commas in the American style. The dot (.) is used as the decimal symbol and the comma (,) is used as the digit grouping symbol. (17305) -- Backing up all sites from the Appliance Administrator interface fails with an error, which is sent as email to root@localhost. This issue can be resolved using the hot fix provided by Ensim. Contact Ensim Support to obtain the hot fix. (17263) -- Adding a file to the clipboard displays the following wrong message: "Are you sure you want to remove the checked file(s)?." (17278) -- Removing a previously copied file from the clipboard results in an error and the file not being removed. (17306) -- Clicking the Detail link in mod_perl results in a 404 error. (17304) -- The UW IMAP daemon contains a buffer overflow which allows a logged in, remote user to execute commands on the server with the user's UID/GID. (17285) RESOLVED ISSUES =============== This section describes the resolved issues of WEBppliance 3.1. -- German special characters (äöüß) are now a part of WEBppliance 3.1 string in order to accommodate German cities consisting of names with special characters. This means hat you can now include the above characters in the text fields. However, for other languages, the support for all special characters is not yet enabled. Hence you are restricted to the following characters in strings: a-z A-Z 0-9 _ - äöüß -- In version 3.1, Webppliance cleans up a site's document root before running FrontPage Administrator program to enable FrontPage for a site. The clean up involves renaming all the incompatible `.htaccess' to `.htaccess.old`, hence, the problem of a site being in an inconsistent state is resolved. ENSIM CUSTOMER SUPPORT ====================== -- To take advantage of Ensim’s support tools or to find technical information quickly, visit the Ensim support page at http://support.ensim.com -- To obtain the latest product documentation or to contact Ensim support, visit the Ensim product support page at http://www.ensim.com/support/wpls/index.html -- If you need additional online support, or if you would like to provide feedback about Ensim documentation, please enter a CaseConnect ticket at https://onlinesupport.ensim.com