Re: CU198 Testing - first feedback on Suricata alert email sending

[Adolf Belka <adolf.belka@ipfire.org>]

Without any new alerts being triggered by the IPS the dma logs showed more of those messages about error creating mbox root.

I then triggered some more alerts in IPS and no new dma messages were seen.

I also checked the mailq output before and after triggering the alerts and there were no additional entries compared to previously.

Regards,

Adolf.


On 29/09/2025 18:10, Adolf Belka wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> 
> 
> On 29/09/2025 17:44, Michael Tremer wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Thanks for testing this. So let’s go through this step by step…
>>
>> First of all, is the companion daemon running? It is a process called suricata-reporter.
> 
> I couldn't find it. Running ps aux | grep suricata showed suricata-watcher and suricata but no suricata-reporter.
> 
>>
>> If so, can you check if the configuration file has emails enabled? It is in /var/ipfire/suricata/reporter.conf.
> 
> Yes there is enabled = true in the [email] section.
> 
>>
>> And finally, can you run “mailq” to see if the emails have been sent and maybe have bounced?
> 
> Ran that command and got a load of stuff but I don't understand it all all.
> 
> Here are just a few that were shown as examples
> 
> ID    : 1a0794.335a3b40
> From    :
> To    : root
> -- 
> ID    : 1a078b.335a3b40
> From    :
> To    : root
> -- 
> ID    : 1a078a.335a3b40
> From    :
> To    : root
> -- 
> ID    : 1a0789.335a3b40
> From    :
> To    : root
> -- 
> ID    : 1a0788.335a3b40
> From    :
> To    : root
> -- 
> 
> I am also seeing the following in the dma logs
> 
> 17:15:00 dma[1a0792.335a3b40]:  local delivery deferred: can not create `/var/mail/root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a0792.335a3b40]:  error creating mbox `root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a078c.335a3b40]:  local delivery deferred: can not create `/var/mail/root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a078c.335a3b40]:  error creating mbox `root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a078a.335a3b40]:  local delivery deferred: can not create `/var/mail/root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a078a.335a3b40]:  error creating mbox `root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a078e.335a3b40]:  local delivery deferred: can not create `/var/mail/root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a078e.335a3b40]:  error creating mbox `root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a078a.335a3b40]:  cannot execute /usr/lib/dma-mbox-create: No such file or directory
> 17:15:00 dma[1a0788.335a3b40]:  local delivery deferred: can not create `/var/mail/root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a0788.335a3b40]:  error creating mbox `root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a0790.335a3b40]:  local delivery deferred: can not create `/var/mail/root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a0790.335a3b40]:  error creating mbox `root'
> 17:15:00 dma[1a0792.335a3b40]:  cannot execute /usr/lib/dma-mbox-create: No such file or directory
> 17:15:00 dma[1a078c.335a3b40]:  cannot execute /usr/lib/dma-mbox-create: No such file or directory
> 17:15:00 dma[1a0792.335a3b40]:  <root> trying delivery
> 17:15:00 dma[1a078c.335a3b40]:  <root> trying delivery
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Adolf.
> 
>>
>> -Michael
>>
>>> On 29 Sep 2025, at 13:58, Adolf Belka <adolf.belka@ipfire.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Forgot to mention, I pressed the test button on the Mail Service WUI page and immediately received the test mail message.
>>>
>>> I use a mail server I have running on my local network.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Adolf.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 29/09/2025 14:52, Adolf Belka wrote:
>>>> Hi All,
>>>> I just ran the update for CU198 Testing on my vm systems.
>>>> The update itself went fine without any error messages or hiccups.
>>>> I then went to test the IPS emailing of alerts.
>>>> I used the same sender and recipient email addresses as I have specified on the Mail Service WUI page.
>>>> I set the alert severity to All, Including Informational Alerts.
>>>> I then followed the suricata testing process as defined in
>>>> https://docs.suricata.io/en/suricata-8.0.1/quickstart.html#alerting
>>>> and I ended up with alerts in the IPS-Logs but no email message received.
>>>> I checked the System logs for the mail system and there was no message trying to be sent. I ran the test 7 times, so ended up with 7 messages in the IPS-Logs.
>>>> I then checked the IPS system Logs and there was no mention of detecting the alerts and trying to send an email.
>>>> I ran the command tail -f /var/log/messages so I could see any additional log entries when I triggered the IPS alerts but again nothing was shown when I triggered the alerts, although the messages did end up in the IPS Logs section.
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Adolf.
>>>
>>>
>>
>