Customer specific URL Category settings empty in Messaging Gateway

Products

• Protection Suite Enterprise Edition
• Messaging Gateway

Issue/Introduction

You find the Spam > Customer-specific URL Category Settings page is empty and URL detection doesn't seem to be working correctly.

 

Looking at the BrightmailLog.log from Status > Logs > Control Center shows errors similar to the following:

Oct 26 2022 15:35:54 [https-jsse-nio-443-exec-4] [DefaultRequestDirector] INFO - I/O exception (java.net.SocketException) caught when processing request: Broken pipe (Write failed)
Oct 26 2022 15:35:54 [https-jsse-nio-443-exec-4] [DefaultRequestDirector] INFO - Retrying request
Oct 26 2022 15:35:54 [https-jsse-nio-443-exec-4] [AgentEvent] WARN - Broken pipe (Write failed) : 10.0.0.10
Oct 26 2022 15:35:54 [https-jsse-nio-443-exec-4] [AgentHelper] ERROR - Cannot obtain data blob.
Oct 26 2022 15:35:54 [https-jsse-nio-443-exec-4] [AgentHelper] ERROR - --- File Name: $STATSDIR$$/$webpulse_categories.xml
Oct 26 2022 15:35:54 [https-jsse-nio-443-exec-4] [AgentHelper] ERROR - An agent error has occurred in the following code path:
java.lang.Exception
        at com.symantec.smg.controlcenter.agent.AgentHelper.logError(AgentHelper.java:458)
        at com.symantec.smg.controlcenter.agent.AgentHelper.logError(AgentHelper.java:511)
        at com.symantec.smg.controlcenter.messagefiltering.spam.SpamAction.refreshDBwithWebpulseCategoriesXML(SpamAction.java:663)

Cause

The Agent service access control list on one or more of the scanners likely does not have the correct IP for the Control Center Ethernet Interface 1 (eth0). This prevents the SMG Control Center web application from communicating with the agent in order to display the customer-specific URL category settings.

Resolution

To confirm that the Agent service has all necessary IPs in its access list

1. Log into the SMG command line interface
2. Run "agent-config --status" to list the allowed IPs:

   smg-combo [10.7.5]> agent-config --status
   127.0.0.1
   10.0.10.10
   Current log level is warnings

3. If the SMG Control Center IP addresses are not in the agent configuration you can add them by running the following command substituting the SMG Control Center Ethernet Interface 1 IP address  (10.0.10.15 is  an example, change this to your Control Center's IP):  

   smg-combo [10.7.5]> agent-config --add 10.0.10.15

4. Confirm that the IP has been added to the agent config:

   smg-combo [10.7.5]> agent-config --status
   127.0.0.1
   10.0.10.10
   10.0.10.15
   Current log level is warnings

 

Important: Manually restart the Agent service to explicitly finalize the settings update:

service agent restart

Additional Information

When the Agent configuration is updated it will state it is restarting the service. This service restart may not fully update the necessary access so it is important to manually restart the service with the "service agent restart" command.