FormMail no longer working on cPanel 70?

[Edwin Tjallings]

Since cpanel v70 we have issues with formail. Tested multiple servers, also a 71/72 edge server and one that is not managed by us. When you go to hostname.domain/cgi-sys/formmail.pl it shows a 500 internal server error. At a 68 server the same url shows a formmail page.

Looks like a bug in cpanel with the new perl version but can not find information about it in the bug topic and nothing about formmail in the release notes.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello @Edwin Tjallings,

Can you confirm that you manually installed the formmail.pl script on the system? If so, can you let us know the output to /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log when you see the internal server error message?

Note that formmail was previously included with cPanel & WHM as part of the CGI Center feature. This feature was deprecated in cPanel & WHM version 60, and removed in cPanel & WHM version 64.

Thank you.

 

[sparek-3]

Was this ever resolved?

Seems cPanel 70 (or 68, I skipped 68) upgraded cPanel's perl from perl 5.24 to perl 5.26 but you forgot to recompile your perl binaries to link to the newer perl version.

# ldd /usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/formmail.pl
linux-vdso.so.1 => (0x00007ffd4aa98000)
libgdbm.so.2 => /usr/lib64/libgdbm.so.2 (0x00007fc642e89000)
/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/perl/524/lib64/perl5/5.24.1/x86_64-linux-64int/CORE/libperl.so => not found
libpthread.so.0 => /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fc642c6c000)
libnsl.so.1 => /lib64/libnsl.so.1 (0x00007fc642a53000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fc64284f000)
libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x00007fc6425cb000)
libcrypt.so.1 => /lib64/libcrypt.so.1 (0x00007fc642394000)
libutil.so.1 => /lib64/libutil.so.1 (0x00007fc642191000)
libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007fc641dfd000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fc64308f000)
libfreebl3.so => /lib64/libfreebl3.so (0x00007fc641bfa000)

/usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/formmail.pl is trying to link to /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/perl/524/lib64/perl5/5.24.1/x86_64-linux-64int/CORE/libperl.so which doesn't exist. It should be linking to /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/perl/526/lib64/perl5/5.26.0/x86_64-linux-64int/CORE/libperl.so

I suspect that there may be other compiled perl binaries that face this same issue.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello @sparek-3,

The /usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/formmail.pl file was provided as part of the CGI Center feature in cPanel. This feature was deprecated in cPanel & WHM version 60, and removed from the product in cPanel & WHM version 64. This is documented at:

cPanel Deprecation Plan - cPanel Knowledge Base - cPanel Documentation

Do you know which version of cPanel & WHM was utilized when cPanel was first installed on this system? Version 64 included a case that should have automatically removed the formmail.pl file:

Fixed case CPANEL-12008: Remove CGI Center apps.

Thank you.

 

[sparek-3]

I can't be sure what version was installed initially, but I'd have to believe it was before cPanel 64.

Yea, been reading on this ever since I submitted this. Wasn't aware that it had been deprecated. That's on me. I might suggest making the deprecation plans a bit louder, but it's also definitely on me for not following this.

Does anyone happen to know of an easy to use drop-in replacement? We've got a lot of clients that still depend on formmail for sending their forms contents. This is going to be a booger to work around.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Does anyone happen to know of an easy to use drop-in replacement? We've got a lot of clients that still depend on formmail for sending their forms contents. This is going to be a booger to work around.

Hello,

Here's a third-party URL where an alternative is suggested:

Site5 KnowledgeBase » cPanel FormMail Support

Though, this would still require uploading it to each account that needs it.

Thank you.