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

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

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.
>>
>>
>