Missing Parallels Plesk for Linux updates

If you’re using Parallels Plesk 9.x with Postfix as the MTA, there appears to be a bug which can stop Plesk from displaying important updates that are available, including the micro-updates which provide important bug fixes and security updates.

If you are using the Updates section of the Plesk web interface, then no error message is displayed, so it just looks like there are no updates available. However, you can also check for updates using the Parallels autoinstaller utility from the command line:

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/autoinstaller –check-updates

After downloading all of the .inf3 files from Parallels, this will give you a badly translated error message:

Unable to process patch config: PSA_9.5.4/plesk-patches-9.5.4-cos5-x86_64.inf3: Failed to parse the patch file at (line 34 column 13)
Group named ‘qmail’ is not exists on this system.

Despite the qmail MTA not being installed because the Postifx MTA is being used, the Plesk autoinstaller utility (which is also used by the web interface) seems to be checking for a “qmail” group. The fix for this is incredibly simple – just create an empty ‘qmail” group:

/usr/sbin/groupadd qmail

Now if you refresh the Updates section in the Plesk web interface or re-run the Parallels autoinstaller from the command line then you should now see the available updates, which you can install in the normal manner.