Cannot activate atomic basic modsecurity

[Franco]

Hi, it all started after upgrading to Plesk 12.5 (now on 12.5.30 update 48). I could no longer enable firewall rules the way it used to be with 12.0. When I do I get the following: Error: The firewall rules management has not been enabled.
I cannot find clues in various psa logs and forums, this is still a problem. I thought it might be due modsecurity which was not installed and I then installed it. However, when I try and enable the fist option, atomic basic rule set I get the following:

Error: modsecurity_ctl failed: /usr/local/psa//admin/sbin/httpd_modules_ctl: line 109: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd-ori.conf
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.new: No such file or directory
cat: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd-ori.conf
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat `/etc/httpd/conf/httpd-ori.conf\n/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.new': No such file or directory
START httpd_modules_ctl --enable security2,unique_id

Of course I followed the suggested knowledge based article which forces you to reisntall modsecurity, but I get the same end result.

Any clues, please? These might be 2 different problems, or course, or perhpas they have the same root cause, that's why I am kind of keeping them together here.

 

[Franco]

Some progress. I had noticed the following error in wordpress logs:
ModSecurity: ModSecurity requires mod_unique_id to be installed.

I then uncommented the mod_unique_id line in httpd conf and restarted httpd. Now I can enable modsecurity in Plesk. Remains the original problem, the firewall management rules that cannot be set from Plesk. Any idea?

Btw, I am on CentOs 6.7.

 

[UFHH01]

Hi Franco,

if the psa - logs don't show any sufficient informations for you, please consider to use the "debug" - level mode:

How to enable/disable debug logging in Plesk 11.5 and up? ( KB - article 120 101 )​

 

[Franco]

Hi all, here is the solution that worked for me and might be useful to others too. I mean, if you have this "Error: The firewall rules management has not been enabled" when saving the firewall rules in Plesk.

First of all, the log did not contain anything useful despite being very detailed and long, it wasn't worth enabling it.

I then removed the Plesk firewall extension and reinstalled it, hoping it would solve it; it wasn't the case, but this time the displayed error message was a bit more verbose and gave me the clue. My rules were inconsistent and caused the extension to reject the whole. After I found the culprit rule and fixed it everything was saved nominally.

Bottom line: if you are in the same case remove and reinsert each rule in turn till you find the one preventing the module to save them.

P.S. Be careful: if you remove the Plesk extension and reinstall it all the rules are gone, you have to start from scratch, thus better remember/note what you had before you reinstall.

Franco