Zmmsgtrace replacement?

[kinux]

Having been a Postfix email server admin for years, I was very excited when I first heard about Zimbra's zmmsgtrace command and its ability to trace messages that have passed through the system. Then, I read from Logger (ZCS 6.0.x and later) - Zimbra :: Wiki some disheartening news:

zmmsgtrace has been removed with no plan for a replacement.

Before I go back to greping through the Postfix/Zimbra logs, I wanted to post this question to the Zimbra community: does anyone know of a utility that can trace down messages like zmmsgtrace used to? I've read that some smart Perl people have made a class for tracing an email through the mailsystem logs over at Mail::Log::Trace - search.cpan.org but I haven't seen any code utilizing these modules (and Perl is one of the few languages that I have absolutely no experience with or otherwise I'd whip something up). I know its a long shot, but I know I'm not the only person missing the functionality provided by zmmsgtrace. Thanks in advance.

[BLuesTime]

As said by kinux : "I was very excited when I first heard about Zimbra's zmmsgtrace command and its ability to trace messages that have passed through the system."

Yes indeed, the zmmsgtrace was VERY usefull...
There is no alternatives?? ...really!

Of course we can scan the maillog, but it is time consuming.

Please help us admins!

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by BLuesTime

Of course we can scan the maillog, but it is time consuming.

That's what you'll have to do as there is no replacement for zmmsgtrace or you could write a script to use this: Daniel T. Staal / Mail-Log-Trace - search.cpan.org & http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-modul...-1.0101.readme

[kinux]

Thank you Phoenix, that's about what I expected after wasting a considerable amount of time searching for a solution. In case anyone feels adventurous enough to try their hand at using the above mentioned Perl modules, 2 things: first, good luck and post your results if you figure it out! Secondly, I tried on two systems (Ubuntu 9.10 + Perl 5.10.0 and Redhat 5.4 + Perl 5.8.8) to use these modules without any luck. After getting past the actual install of this module and its dependencies (the ultra-reliable 'perl -MCPAN -e 'install module' failed on both systems so I had to manually download and install), the test code I prepared didn't return any errors, but it also couldn't trace any message despite using almost every conceivable combination of search terms.

I apologize if this is a little off topic for a Zimbra forum, but I feel like zmmsgtrace was a great weapon for any email admin's arsenal and a large portion of the Zimbra community would rejoice if an alternative could be found. Just my 2¢.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by kinux

I apologize if this is a little off topic for a Zimbra forum, but I feel like zmmsgtrace was a great weapon for any email admin's arsenal and a large portion of the Zimbra community would rejoice if an alternative could be found. Just my 2¢.

You could always vote on the RFEs for a replacement in bugzilla.

BTW, the 'community' could always produce it's own replacement for zmmsgtrace.

[ewilen]

A request has been logged to bugzilla. You might consider voting for it!

https://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=41078

[dave_kempe]

To resurrect this thread, I found a command line tool that works for me that might be useful...
The steps I used to do on ubuntu to get it working:
wget http://taz.net.au/postfix/scripts/mailgrep.pl
wget http://taz.net.au/postfix/scripts/openlogfile.pl
apt-get install libfile-mmagic-perl
chmod +x mailgrep.pl

and then
./mailgrep.pl -s pattern
where pattern is what you want to search for..
it uses /var/log/mail.log by default, but you can search /var/log/mail.log.0 or others by passing them in as the last argument.
Its a little more useful than plain grep, as it matches the mail as it flows through amavis and the ID gets changed.