Nowadays, it’s quite common to have multiple business email addresses. So, forwarding emails to a single account help to manage emails easily.

Most of the Webmail clients like RoundCube, Horde, SquirrelMail, etc. have the functionality to forward emails. But, users may often confuse with this option.

That’s why, we often get requests from our customers to set “Webmail forwarding” as part of our Server Management Services.

Today, we’ll see how our Support Engineers setup “Roundcube Webmail forwarding” and fix the related issue.

More about RoundCube Webmail forwarding

First, let’s understand more on RoundCube Webmail.

Roundcube is an email client that provides an interface to compose and read emails. With its desktop-like user interface, it is easy to install/configure.

Some of the main features are listed below.

• Unlimited users and messages.
• Spell checking.
• Multiple sender identities.
• Drag-&-drop message management.
• Email forwarding.

That makes Roundcube one of the favorite webmail solution.

How we set up Roundcube Webmail forwarding

Now, let’s see how our Support Team set up Roundcube Webmail forwarding for our clients.

1. We log into customer’s Webmail and choose Roundcube as default.

2. Then from the top menu bar under Settings, we click the Forwarders tab.

3. Next, we choose Add Forwarder. This will send a copy of the incoming email from one address to another.

4. We then give the entry for the Destination email address.

5. Finally, we click Add Forwarder.

In RoundCube, we can also set Webmail forwarding using another feature like Email Filters.

How we fixed Webmail forwarding for a customer

Recently,one of our customers approached us with a problem after Roundcube upgrade. Their email forwarding stopped with error code 403. None of the emails were forwarding either.

On detailed investigation of the logs, our Security Engineers found that Mod_Security was the reason for failure. Mod_security is a web server module that blocks the access of suspicious links. One of the mod_security rule enabled on the domain blocked the Roundcube url too. The fix was to prevent Mod_security from affecting the webmail links.

Let’s see the steps that our Support Engineers took to fix the problem.

1. Initially, we checked the web server logs to verify if there is an error regarding forwarding email.

2. Then, we found an entry like the following.

May 18 15:37:26 2009 [client *.*.*.* File does not exist: /home/mydomain/public_html/mail/403.shtml]

3. We found that the error is due to mod_security rule in apache module that affects the installation of Roundcube when upgraded.

There are 2 options to solve this problem.

1. Turning off Mod_Security for the domain

We can disable mod_security for the domain by doing the following steps.

Open httpd.conf file and uncomment the below line.

Include "/usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/USERNAME/DOMAIN.COM/*.conf"

Then insert the rule to turn off mod_security and restart apache.

echo "SecRuleEngine Off" > /usr/local/apache/userdata/std/2/USER/DOMAIN.COM/modsec.conf
service httpd restart

However, we do not recommend disabling the mod_security completely for a domain as it prevent the blocking of all suspicious links on the domain.

2. Disabling Mod_Security Rules

Alternatively, there is another option to disable specific mod_security rules. For this, we took the necessary steps below.

1. We searched for the domain that is having the problem with ModSecurity

grep domain.com /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log | grep ModSecurity

2. From that, we got the corresponding id and we set the rule to remove mod_security.

SecRuleRemoveById 950004

3. Finally, we restarted the apache to reflect the changes made in the configuration.

service httpd restart

Thus, the problem was solved and the customer’s Roundcube Webmail forwarding started working properly.

[Having problems in RoundCube Webmail forwarding? We can fix it for you.]

Conclusion

In short, Webmail forwarding allows redirecting incoming e-mails from one email address to another. Today, we saw how our Technical Engineers configured “Roundcube Webmail forwarding” and fixed the related issue.