Ubuntu LTS the only way to go

When I first configured my cloud server, I was under the impression that I would just be trying it out, a test environment. It didn’t occur to me that I’d actually put it in production. Flippantly, I chose 12.10 instead of opting for 12.04 LTS, which is supported through May 2017. Well, 13.04 was already out of service by the time I got my notice that 12.10 was end-of-life, so the upgrade path was 12.10 -> 13.10 -> 14.04 LTS. Good news is that was easy enough to do. Bad news was 13.10 broke Apache’s Auth_MYSQL, which is used with AWSTATS in iRedMail. 

Like a good itjerk, I didn’t panic, went straight from 13.10 to 14.04 LTS, and would worry about the mess from there. Ends up that Auth_MYSQL isn’t supported in Apache 2.4.x, which is what 14.04LTS ships with. So I had to switch to Auth_DBD instead. Zhang at iRedMail was very helpful, and I got everything back up and working. BTW, Denyhosts is no longer supported in 14.04 LTS, that package had to be purged.

Apache2.conf needs this:

DBDriver mysql
DBDParams "host=127.0.0.1 port=3306 dbname=mail user=mail pass=xxxx

While awstats.conf needs:

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Authentication required"
AuthBasicProvider dbd
AuthDBDUserPWQuery "SELECT password FROM mailbox WHERE username=%s"
Require valid-user

Then, do this:
a2enmod auth_dbd
apt-get install libaprutil1-dbd-mysql
service apache restart


Moral of the story: Use LTS. Always. 

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