ASSP Deluxe for cPanel : upgrade from ASSP v1 to v2

Should I upgrade to ASSP 2.x ?
ASSP v1 is EOL, however if you have no problems using ASSP 1.x ( most of SPAM blocked, no issues ), you may continue to use it . ASSP 1.x will continue to be supported in ASSP Deluxe for servers with low hardware resources and for low/medium email traffic servers.
If you have a server with good harware resources (check the minimum hardware requests for ASSP v2 below), if you need addictional antispam features (Razor, DCC, PYZOR, antivirus for compressed attachments, HMM filter ), if you wish better antispam performance, if your server receives huge daily email traffic, YES you have good reasons to upgrade to ASSP 2.x . Other major features included in ASSP v2 are 
If you are familiar executing console commands and setting cronjobs the upgrade will be easy and the downtime will be limited to few EXIM/ASSP restarts. If you fail some step in the upgrade please send a message to this email and be sure to include your licensed ip. At the end of upgrade you ( or anyone who is upgrading ASSP for you ) must apply the post installation steps . The upgrade does not make modifications to your system/OS. You can, at any time, choose to fully disable ASSP instantly (returning to EXIM/cPanel way) without uninstalling ASSP.
BTW if you need to uninstall ASSP click here . 

Following HOW TO upgrades ASSP V. 1.x to ASSP V. 2.x


Time required to complete ASSP v2 upgrade about 45 minutes.  

Only if you have CSF firewall installed go to cPanel WHM  Plugins  ConfigServer Security & Firewall and click Firewall Configuration.

Adds ,125,25,26,587,55553,55555,2703 to TCP_IN =
Adds ,25,26,587,55553,55555,2703 to TCP_OUT =
Adds ,6277,24441 to UDP_IN =
Adds ,6277,24441 to UDP_OUT =
Set DENY_IP_LIMIT = to 2000

Save Settings in CSF firewall and restart it.

Now disable and stop your ASSP using these steps .
  • Open ASSP WHM INTERFACE and click STOP. After some seconds you will receive following message shown in the image below how to stop assp
  • Now click the link to fully disable ASSP. After pressing the link your ASSP will be fully stopped and disabled. ASSP fully stopped

Ok now execute following commands to install ASSP v2 package

Now you can install Perl for ASSP v2. ASSP 2.x requires a linux-thread-multi Perl and latest recommended Perl for ASSP v2 is 5.30.0 ; it will be installed in /usr/local/perls . You can remove this custom Perl location ( /usr/local/perls ) if you'll decide to uninstall ASSP. Execute following commands to install Perl 5.30.0 in /usr/local/perls now.

Perl installation will require about 15-20 minutes , at the end of Perl installation execute following command to install ASSP Perl modules. 

Perl module installation will require other 20-25 minutes, if it returns some Perl module errors you may ignore them for now. Once completed execute this

Only if you have more than one /home location (e.g. /home /home2 /home3) you must enter each home location (one location per row) by editing the file /usr/local/assp/deluxe/home . For example if you have /home /home2 and /home3  your /usr/local/assp/deluxe/home file must have this

Each time you change something in this file /usr/local/assp/deluxe/home you should execute ex_localdomains.php as shown below to load new accounts and new email in ASSP. ASSP Deluxe currently accepts max 4 home locations.

Ok now open cPanel WHM Plugins Grscripts ASSP Deluxe, and click Update ASSP Perl Modules as shown below 

install perl modules using ASSP WHM interface

Once completed return to console and execute the command below to edit your cronjobs

and remove rebuildspamdb.pl cron , remove this row or this

You should have only following rows ( in the FAQs section you can learn what does these cronjobs )

Save cronjob list and exit.

Now execute this

Now open cPanel WHM Plugins Grscripts ASSP Deluxe, and click START ASSP as shown below

start ASSP using ASSP WHM

ASSP should start correctly and you should be able to see its activity in ASSP log using this way

Now open ASSP WHM interface SCORE SETTINGS and set PenaltyMessageLimit to 56 , Bayesian filter to 11 and HMM filter to 43 and save settings. These values are a good choice to start your ASSP v2 in the first days. After some week when your ASSP will build a robust HMM, Bayesian and whitelist dabatase you can reduce some point the PenaltyMessageLimit (more spam will be blocked).

Now go to console and execute this to install Razor and DCC automatically . Once completed the step above ASSP must be setup to use SSL and SSL SNI. If you already setup SSL in ASSP v1 you should follow instructions to setup only SSL SNI. ASSP SSL can be setup automatically using the ASSP SSL MENU in your ASSP WHM interface . Each time you change a setting for ASSP SSL , ASSP must be restarted . Using the ASSP MENU you can choose the SSL certificate for your hostname, enable/disable ASSP SSL for ASSP Web interface, you can enable/disable SSL/STARTTLS for all listenport , and enable/disable SSL SNI . SSL SNI permits your user to send SSL/STARTTLS email using mail.domain.com . If you have more than one hundred domains I recommend you to enable SNI only for domain which are really using it, you can do it using the SNI domain selector. The video below shows you the easy steps to enable ASSP SSL and SSL SNI for all your domain names.



Now a database must setup for ASSP v2. ASSP needs to store spam and notspam keywords and whitelist, and all this data must be processed fast. By default ASSP starts with a flat txt database which is strongly NOT recommended. By using ASSP Deluxe for cPanel you can setup in few easy steps a BerkeleyDB database ( recommended ) or a MySQL database . You can choose between one of these two solutions below, BerkeleyDB or MySQL.

BerkeleyDB ASSP Setup

Open your console and execute following command which will install BerkeleyDB 5.3.28 in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.5.3 and the BerkeleyDB Perl module for your ASSP Perl

Open the  ASSP WHM INTERFACE and click STOP ASSP. Once ASSP is fully stopped execute this to configure ASSP to use BerkeleyDB

Open the  ASSP WHM INTERFACE and click START ASSP. Your ASSP should start correctly and you should see a new menu in your ASSP WHM INTERFACE as shown below.

enable ASSP berkeleydb

MySQL ASSP Setup

If you prefer to use MySQL and you did NOT enable BerkeleyDB above you can setup MySQL for your ASSP using following way.

Open the WHM cPanel SQL Services MySQL/MariaDB Upgrade and check your current MySQL version. You should have at least MySQL 5.7 or MariaDB 10.x . If you have an older MySQL version you should upgrade it . If an upgrade is not possible it's better to use the BerkeleyDB database using the BerkeleyDB HOW TO above.

Ok now open your MySQL /etc/my.cnf configuration file using your preferred console editor and add following rows required by ASSP to avoid MySQL disconnections ( add them at the end of [mysqld] section )

Save the file and restart MySQL in this way

Now open the ASSP WHM INTERFACE and click MYSQL SETUP and follow simple instructions to activate MySQL.

Once MySQL has been setup return to ASSP WHM INTERFACE and you should see a new menu as shown below.

enable ASSP MySQL

Final steps

Upgrade is almost complete, at this point your ASSP should be running correctly with SSL, database, spambox (if you installed it in ASSP v1) and preconfigured with moderate antispam settings. There are few more simple steps required to run your ASSP at the best.

Open the ASSP WHM INTERFACE , go to "ASSP 2.x core settings" and choose number of SMTP workers following the instructions. 5 is default and should be good in most cases . You can increase or reduce based on your server RAM and SMTP traffic . If you receive a lot of SMTP traffic you may consider a bigger value (8-12 e.g.). A value above 15 is not recommended. If your server has less than 8 GB RAM set to 3 max 5 workers. Remember that more workers means more SMTP processing speed, so if your users are experiencing delay to send email you should try to increase number of ASSP worker one step at time. Each time you change number of workers ASSP needs to execute a restart.

set correct number of ASSP workers

Open the ASSP WHM INTERFACE , go to "ASSP 2.x core settings" and click enable PYZOR and ANTIVIRUS CHECKS . Pyzor checks will improve antispam performance while ANTIVIRUS CHECKS permits to scan also compressed email attachments. 
Pyzor requires at least Python version 2.7.5 if you have an old OS (Centos 6 e.g.) Pyzor could not work.

set correct number of ASSP workers

After enabling Pyzor and Antivirus execute this to activate immediately the new features (ASSP will be restarted to load the new feature)

Finally it's time to open the ASSP GUI to set ASSP GUI password and activate DCC and Razor plugins. Go to ASSP WHM INTERFACE and click ASSP WEB INTERFACE . Your ASSP WEB INTERFACE (GUI) should open you can login with..

You can see now the ASSP WEB INTERFACE . ASSP web Interface

No panic, there are countless settings here in ASSP v2 but it's everything preconfigured by ASSP Deluxe for cPanel installation; if needed you'll learn to use it day by day. You can find here ASSP core settings which are better you do not change ( for example SSL settings which are controlled using ASSP SSL MENU, database settings controlled using ASSP WHM interface, Score/Penalty Box settings ,  and some other core settings) and ASSP antispam settings which probably you may use often, for example the "Whitelist" menu, The "validate sender" menu, The "Perl Regular Expression Filter and Spambomb Detection" and some other. All ASSP GUI settings are saved in /usr/local/assp/assp.cfg (ASSP configuration file) . You should never edit manually this file, this file contains also crypted data , so you may risk to mess up your ASSP, always use the ASSP Web interface if you want change an ASSP setting.  A backup of your configuration file /usr/local/assp/assp.cfg is saved daily in /usr/local/assp/backup_cfg , so if after doing some change in ASSP GUI your ASSP stops to work correctly , STOP your ASSP using the ASSP WHM INTERFACE , restore a working assp.cfg file from /usr/local/assp/backup_cfg to /usr/local/assp/assp.cfg and START ASSP again . You can also backup all the folder /usr/local/assp ( for example in  /usr/local/assp_backup) and restore it in case your ASSP stops to working correctly after making a wrong setting in ASSP GUI or other issues.

Now, to complete the ASSP v2 upgrade I recommend you to take only a fast look to your ASSP GUI and to apply following final few steps. First of all your ASSP should appear like this below, you should see a green dot, which means all ASSP DBs are working correctly. If you see a red dot , close the ASSP GUI, STOP and START your ASSP using ASSP WHM INTERFACE , then open again the ASSP GUI .If the problem does not fix you should have failed the database installation some step above.
check ASSP STATUS

Now open the ASSP Razor Plugin menu and set DoASSP_Razor to score, then open the ASSP DCC Plugin menu and set DoASSP_DCC to score.
Ok you can SAVE/APPLY ASSP settings in your ASSP GUI. You can close the ASSP WEB INTERFACE now.


ASSP antispam