Command Center

Vacation is the automatic mail answering program found on many Unix systems. This write up will guide you on how to install and configure the vacation email responder and setup it using the popular webmail SquirrelMail in CentOS 5. Do not use my previous write up as a guide because the SquirrelMail Vacation Local plugin contains dangerous vulnerabilities. You are advised to upgrade to the SquirrelMail Local User Autoresponder and Mail Forwarder plugin immediately.

Requirement: Vacation, Sendmail, SquirrelMail, SquirrelMail Local User Autoresponder and Mail Forwarder plugin, SquirrelMail Compatibility plugin, vsftp and CentOS 5

1. Download vacation-1.2.6.3.tar.gz from the link below: -
http://vacation.sourceforge.net

2. Extract the vacation to a temporary directory as below: -
tar xvfz vacation-1.2.6.3.tar.gz -C /tmp

3. Change directory to /tmp/vacation-1.2.6.3 as below: -
cd /tmp/vacation-1.2.6.3

4. Run the “make” command as below: -
make

5. Copy the “vacation” binary to “/usr/bin” as below: -
cp vacation /usr/bin

6. Create a softlink in the Sendmail’s restricted shell utility “smrsh” as below: -
cd /etc/smrsh
ln -s /usr/bin/vacation vacation

7. Next, lets proceed with installing and configuring SquirrelMail’s Local User Autoresponder and Mail Forwarder Plugin. Download local_autorespond_forward-3.0-1.4.0.tar.gz from the link below: -
http://www.squirrelmail.org/plugin_view.php?id=264

8. Extract the local_autoresponder_forward to SquirrelMail’s plugin directory (in CentOS 5) as below: -
tar xvfz local_autorespond_forward-3.0-1.4.0.tar.gz -C /usr/share/squirrelmail/plugins

9. Download the Compatibility plugin from the link below: -
http://www.squirrelmail.org/plugin_view.php?id=152

10. Extract the compatibility plugin to SquirrelMail’s plugin directory (in CentOS 5) as below: -
tar xvfz compatibility-2.0.8-1.0.tar.gz -C /usr/share/squirrelmail/plugins

11. Run the SquirrelMail’s config command as below: -
cd /usr/share/squirrelmail/config
./conf.pl

12. Patch your SquirrelMail according to your version as below: -
patch -p0 < patches/compatibility_patch-1.4.8.diff

13. In SquirrelMail Configuration Main Menu, key-in “8″ to enter Plugins menu. Next, key-in the number that refer to “local_autorespond_forward” to install the plugin

14. Create the local_autorespond_forward configuration file as below: -
cd /usr/share/squirrelmail/plugin/local_autorespond_forward
cp config.php.sample config.php

15. Edit the config.php file and change the following as below: -
$ftp_passive = 1;

16. Next, you need to enable the vsftp service in init level 3, 4 and 5 as below: -
chkconfig --level 345 vsftp on

17. Let’s start the vsftp service as below: -
service vsftp start

You can now begin to use the SquirrelMail’s local_autorespond_forward plugin to configure the vacation email responder for Sendmail.

Source: Vacation Email Responder

REFERENCE

http://wingloon.com/2007/09/05/vacation-email-responder-for-sendmail-in-centos-5/