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Configuring and testing email alerts

Local SMTP server that accepts unauthenticated emails

If you have a local SMTP server that accepts unauthenticated emails (possibly from an unqualified domain e.g. noreply@myservername), then you can do this from within XenCenter:

1. Right-click on your pool and choose Properties
2. On your pool properties, select the Email Options section on the left:
   
3. Tick the Send email alter notifications and enter the email address to send to and the SMTP server details

Testing

1. Log in as root onto your pool master (either console or over ssh)
2. Determine your pool's UUID:

   [root@xen ~]# xe pool-list --minimal
   7b77a9ef-dd01-fb77-08d9-52a76e0bdb09
   

3. Create an event entry with a high enough priority to trigger an email (2 is good):

   [root@xen ~]# xe message-create pool-uuid=7b77a9ef-dd01-fb77-08d9-52a76e0bdb09 name="Test" body="Test message" priority=2
   

4. The event will be shown in XenCenter:
   
5. You should receive an email similar to:

   From: noreply@xen.internal
   To: support@mydomain.com
   Subject: [MyPool] XenServer Message: Pool 7b77a9ef-dd01-fb77-08d9-52a76e0bdb09 Test
   
   Field		Value
   -----		-----
   Name:		Test
   Priority:	2
   Class:		Pool
   Object UUID:	7b77a9ef-dd01-fb77-08d9-52a76e0bdb09
   Timestamp:	20220225T09:43:26Z
   Message UUID:	9501d44b-fb9d-4ce9-901d-3590e0460b0d
   Pool name:	MyPool
   Body:	Test message
   

6. If you do not receive the mail, check /var/log/maillog on the hypervisor you are logged onto

Advanced settings (overriding sending address, STARTTLS, SMTP authentication)

If your mail server rejects the emails because they have an invalid sender email address or you need to send via a server that requires authentication, you will need to do further manual configuration.

To alter the sending address, create /etc/mail-alarm.conf using the nano editor. Enter the email address in the root= line, the domain in the RewriteDomain= line and the SMTP server in the mailhub= line:

root=support@mydomain.com
mailhub=192.168.30.40:25
RewriteDomain=mydomain.com

After sending a test, you will see the sender has now changed to:

From: "root" <root@mydomain.com>

For authenticated SMTP, you will need to determine whether you want to send with TLS (usually port 465) or STARTTLS (ports 25 or 587). Edit /etc/mail-alarm.conf. For STARTTLS use something like:

authUser=smtpuser
authPass=smtppass
mailhub=smtp.myisp.com:587
UseSTARTTLS=yes
TLS_CA_File=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

For TLS (e.g. for Gmail) use:

authUser=smtpuser
authPass=smtppass
mailhub=smtp.myisp.com:465
UseTLS=yes
TLS_CA_File=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

You can combine this with the root= and RewriteDomain= lines as required. You must include the TLS_CA_File= line otherwise you wlil get errors like:

Feb 25 08:37:15 xen sSMTP[17841]: Creating SSL connection to host
Feb 25 08:37:15 xen sSMTP[17841]: SSL not working: certificate verify failed (20)
Feb 25 08:37:15 xen sSMTP[17841]: Cannot open 192.168.30.40:25

You should put the /etc/mail-alarm.conf file on each member of your pool.