cPanel Error:The system experienced the following error when it attempted to install the “OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set V3.0” vendor

Posted on Feb 6, 2018

I’ve noticed that since upgrading cPanel to v68.0.28 our ModSecurity Vendors have dropped off, and no longer available in the interface, and the rules are no longer available for Apache.

When trying to add the OWASP Ruleset (Vendor) back, I get the following error message.

Error:The system experienced the following error when it attempted to install the “OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set V3.0” vendor: API failure: The system could not validate the new Apache configuration because httpd exited with a nonzero value. Apache produced the following error: httpd: Syntax error on line 208 of /etc/apache2/conf/httpd.conf: Syntax error on line 32 of /etc/apache2/conf.d/modsec2.conf: Syntax error on line 29 of /etc/apache2/conf.d/modsec/modsec2.cpanel.conf: Could not open configuration file /etc/apache2/conf.d/modsec_vendor_configs/OWASP/modsecurity_crs_10_setup.conf: No such file or directory

The fix!

The fix is to edit /var/cpanel/modsec_cpanel_conf_datastore and remove all the active configs. For example, remove all of these active_configs and active_vendors.

$ nano /var/cpanel/modsec_cpanel_conf_datastore

So it looks like this:

* Remember to leave the top line in : ‘—’

Then go back to WHM, and you should be able to install the Vendors!

I hope this fixes it for you. Remember to backup the /var/cpanel/modsec_cpanel_conf_datastore file.