Using avelsieve to edit Sieve filters in SquirrelMail on 10.5

If you have gotten used to using server side mail filters using Sieve and squirrelmail, you'll probably notice that existing rules work fine in Leopard Server, but if you create a new rule you'll get the dreaded "Did not specify legal script data length" when trying to save the new rule. This is due to a change in PHP5 in how curly brackets are quoted in PHP scripts. But fear not. There are 2 solutions:

1. Use the existing avelsieve package provide here on AFP548, and make a slight modifications to it to fix the quoting incompatibility.
2. Use the more full featured dev release of avelsieve (v. 1.9.7 at the writing of this). 

Both work fine.  I like the cleaner interface to 1.9.7 in SquirrelMail, but it is a dev release, so caution is advised.  I'll provide instructions on how to get both working.

Option 1: Use the existing avelsieve.pkg:

If you already have it installed due to a server upgrade, skip steps 1-3, and just edit the sieve-php.lib.php file in step 4.

1.  Download the avelsieve package here and install on the server.  It dumps its files in /usr/share/squirrelmail/plugins, which is sym linked by /etc/squirrelmail/plugins -> /usr/share/squirrelmail/plugins. 

2.   Activate the plugins via the config.pl script in /etc/squirrelmail/config:

<span class="Apple-style-span">s</span>udo perl&nbsp;/etc/squirrelmail/config/conf.pl<br />

Choose option (8) for Plugins

select "avelsieve".

This adds the correct configuration line to  /etc/squirrelmail/config.php.

3.  Set the correct authentication type.  Edit /etc/squirrelmail/plugins/avelsieve/config.php and change:

<span class="Apple-style-span">&#36;</span>preferred_mech = &quot;PLAIN&quot;;<br />

 to

<span class="Apple-style-span">&nbsp;</span>&#36;preferred_mech = &quot;CRAM-MD5&quot;;<br />

If you are using PLAIN or LOGIN, set it to that, but most likely it will be CRAM-MD5. 

4.  Edit the /etc/squirrelmail/plugins/avelsieve/lib/sieve-php.lib.php file. Find the line:

    fputs($this->fp, "PUTSCRIPT \"$scriptname\" \{$len+}\r\n"); 

 

and change it to :

 

    fputs($this->fp, "PUTSCRIPT \"$scriptname\"".' {'."$len+".'}'."\r\n");

 
The issue is the quoting of the curly bracket.  The output of this iine is supposed to be something like:
PUTSCRIPT "PHPSCRIPT" {503+}  but instead comes out as:
 
PUTSCRIPT "PHPSCRIPT" \{503+}

 Option 2: Use the dev version:

1.  Go to http://email.uoa.gr/projects/squirrelmail/avelsieve_download.php and download the latest dev version.  As of this writing, it is version 1.9.7. Hopefully it will soon be 2.0 and part of the stable release.

2.  If you currently have avelsieve installed in, move it out of the way:

<span class="Apple-style-span">s</span>udo mv /usr/share/squirrelmail/plugins/avelsieve /usr/share/squirrelmail/plugins/avelsieve.old<br />

3.  copy avelsieve-1.9.7.tar.gz to /usr/share/squirrelmail/plugins and unzip and untar it.  You should now have a new avelsieve folder in /usr/share/squirrelmail/plugins.

4. Change the owner to www:staff and permissions to something sane like 744. 

4. The config file is in a bit of a different location, and is a different format than the prior version of avelsieve.  Copy /etc/squirrelmail/plugins/avelsieve/config/config_sample.php to /etc/squirrelmail/plugins/avelsieve/config/config.php. 

5.  Edit this  config.php and change the authenication type to :

<span class="Apple-style-span">&nbsp;</span>&#36;sieve_preferred_sasl_mech = &#39;CRAM-MD5&#39;;<br />

Head over to http://<your domain>/webmail, sign in, and you should now see the new interface and be able to add filters.