Cannot repair mail service for a domain: Invalid or unsupported Unicode character or escape sequence found in string

Symptoms

• plesk repair mail command fails with the following error:

  # plesk repair mail example.com
  Repairing the mail server configuration
  Reconfiguring the settings of domains: example.com ........ [OK]
  Reconfiguring the mailboxes .....................................
  [2016-09-13 15:56:14] ERR [util_exec] proc_close() failed ['/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/mailname_repair'] with exit code [1] [FAILED]
  - mailname_repair failed: Input parse error: Invalid or
  unsupported Unicode character or escape sequence found in
  string. UTF8 encoded characters and '\\u' escape sequences are
  not supported. Error occured at offset 2124, character '\\'.
  Worker /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/mailname_repair.worker failed
  with exit status 1
  Error messages: 0; Warnings: 0; Errors resolved: 0
  exit status 1

• In Domains > Email Addresses > test@example.com > Auto-Reply contains text in Japanese/French/German or other languages considered as NON-ASCII.

Cause

NON-ASCII symbols in Auto-Reply in one or several mailboxes. This is Plesk bug with ID #PPPM-4946 , that will be fixed in future Plesk updates.

Resolution

Until fix available, proceed with the following:

1. Log in to Plesk;

2. Open Home > Domains > example.com > Mail and find all mailboxes with auto-reply enabled. Alternatively, it is possible to locate all mailboxes with enabled auto-reply option on a server directly: connect to the server via SSH and execute the command:

   # MYSQL_PWD=`cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow` mysql -u admin psa -Ne "select m.mail_name, d.name AS domain from domains d, mail m where m.dom_id = d.id and m.autoresponder='true'"
   +-----------+----------+
   | test | example.com |
   | test2| example.com |
   +-----------+----------+

   In this output, emails with enabled auto-reply option are test@example.com and test2@example.com

3. Temporary disable Auto-Reply for each mailbox via Domains > example.com > Email address > test@example.com > Auto-reply;

4. Connect to the server via SSH and run the command:

   # plesk repair mail

5. Turn on Auto-Reply back for mailboxes, if needed in Domains > example.com > Email address > test@example.com.