New setup - am not receiving admin email

AI-generated summary

The user, Normanton_Youth, is experiencing issues with receiving admin emails in their Discourse setup on a DigitalOcean server with Ubuntu. They have their own SMTP server that works fine with other apps, but not with Discourse. After following the email troubleshooting guide and checking their config file, they still can’t resolve the issue. codinghorror suggests checking the logs and offers to set up email through their $99 install option, which includes a deal on Mandrill email.

However, Normanton_Youth eventually discovers the problem - their computers are behind a proxy, which was not accounted for in their setup. After resolving this issue, everything is working as expected. They thank codinghorror for the help and acknowledge the hours spent researching have improved their knowledge of Discourse.

I’ve set up discourse on digitalocean server with ubuntu - it all installed fine.

I have my own smtp server that sends out emails fine from various apps. I can telnet into it without a problem on port 25 from any location including the discourse server.

When I try to login or register or rebuilt discourse I don’t seem to receive any emails.When trying to create a new user I can’t as the system seems to hang verifying my user id. Tried using mandrill but it wants apis as password which I can’t seem to find on their site.

Not sure how to move forward - the logs don’t seem to show any errors or problems. Am pretty stuck.

What does forum.example.com/logs say? Did you follow our email troubleshooting howto? The mandrill API keys are under API section, they are not hard to find.

I did follow the guide - can’t seem to spot the problem - my config file on our sandbox has:

DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS: 'xxx@gmail.com'
DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME: 'monthlysend.com'
DISCOURSE_SMTP_ADDRESS: 209.190.96.26          # (mandatory)
DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT: 25                        # (optional)
DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER_NAME: discourse            # (optional)
DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD:  xxx # (optional)
DISCOURSE_SMTP_AUTHENTICATION: "login"

I do telnet 209.190.96.26 and that works fine - I can see the inbound queue on the mta and no emails are coming in.

After any updates to config I rerun:

cd /var/discourse/
./launcher rebuild app
which runs fine.

I see the following in the log file:

run-parts: executing /etc/runit/1.d/00-ensure-links
run-parts: executing /etc/runit/1.d/anacron
run-parts: executing /etc/runit/1.d/cleanup-pids
Cleaning stale PID files
run-parts: executing /etc/runit/1.d/copy-env
run-parts: executing /etc/runit/1.d/ensure-web-nginx-read
Started runsvdir, PID is 29
ok: run: redis: (pid 37) 0s
ok: run: postgres: (pid 42) 0s
rsyslogd: invalid or yet-unknown config file command 'KLogPermitNonKernelFacility' - have you forgotten to load a module? [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/3003 ]
rsyslogd: warning: ~ action is deprecated, consider using the 'stop' statement instead [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2307 ]
rsyslogd: Could no open output pipe '/dev/xconsole': No such file or directory [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2039 ]
37:M 12 Aug 03:43:44.439 * Redis 3.0.1 (00000000/0) 64 bit, standalone mode, port 6379, pid 37 ready to start.
37:M 12 Aug 03:43:44.442 # Server started, Redis version 3.0.1
37:M 12 Aug 03:43:44.443 # WARNING overcommit_memory is set to 0! Background save may fail under low memory condition. To fix this issue add 'vm.overcommit_memory = 1'$
37:M 12 Aug 03:43:44.444 # WARNING you have Transparent Huge Pages (THP) support enabled in your kernel. This will create latency and memory usage issues with Redis. T$
37:M 12 Aug 03:43:44.447 # WARNING: The TCP backlog setting of 511 cannot be enforced because /proc/sys/net/core/somaxconn is set to the lower value of 128.
Server listening on 0.0.0.0 port 22.

Server listening on :: port 22.

37:M 12 Aug 03:43:44.478 * DB loaded from disk: 0.029 seconds
37:M 12 Aug 03:43:44.488 * The server is now ready to accept connections on port 6379
2015-08-12 03:43:44 UTC [61-1] LOG:  database system was shut down at 2015-08-12 03:42:56 UTC
2015-08-12 03:43:44 UTC [42-1] LOG:  database system is ready to accept connections
2015-08-12 03:43:44 UTC [65-1] LOG:  autovacuum launcher started
supervisor pid: 43 unicorn pid: 67
37:M 12 Aug 03:48:45.021 * 10 changes in 300 seconds. Saving...
37:M 12 Aug 03:48:45.025 * Background saving started by pid 449
449:C 12 Aug 03:48:45.041 * DB saved on disk
449:C 12 Aug 03:48:45.042 * RDB: 0 MB of memory used by copy-on-write
37:M 12 Aug 03:48:45.127 * Background saving terminated with success
37:M 12 Aug 03:53:46.096 * 10 changes in 300 seconds. Saving...
37:M 12 Aug 03:53:46.099 * Background saving started by pid 775
775:C 12 Aug 03:53:46.129 * DB saved on disk
775:C 12 Aug 03:53:46.131 * RDB: 0 MB of memory used by copy-on-write
37:M 12 Aug 03:53:46.200 * Background saving terminated with success
37:M 12 Aug 03:58:47.055 * 10 changes in 300 seconds. Saving...
37:M 12 Aug 03:58:47.056 * Background saving started by pid 1100
...
27439:C 12 Aug 10:40:07.085 * DB saved on disk
27439:C 12 Aug 10:40:07.087 * RDB: 0 MB of memory used by copy-on-write
37:M 12 Aug 10:40:07.150 * Background saving terminated with success
37:M 12 Aug 10:45:08.087 * 10 changes in 300 seconds. Saving...
37:M 12 Aug 10:45:08.095 * Background saving started by pid 27768
27768:C 12 Aug 10:45:08.111 * DB saved on disk
27768:C 12 Aug 10:45:08.111 * RDB: 0 MB of memory used by copy-on-write
37:M 12 Aug 10:45:08.197 * Background saving terminated with success

Any thoughts on this codinghorror? I’m struggling with this registration thing - isn’t it possible to activate via ssh command line or something? This is really frustrating to get going - I’ve spent a no of days on this with no test system…I must say it’s been the most difficult app I’ve ever tried to install on linux (I initially tried centos - and finally found without a kernal patch it wasn’t going to work!)

Yes, if you search howto topics you can set up an admin manually.

You are still in a world of pain if you cannot get email going since nobody will be able to sign up for your site. I suggest purchasing our $99 install option if you want functional email, as we will set it up on your behalf.

(You also get a sweet mandrill free email deal since we have a private promo code that I can’t disclose, but uh.. let’s just say It is a very good deal enough that the mail part of the install becomes kind of a crazy bargain even if you threw everything else away.)

Cracked it - my voluntary group’s computers all go through a proxy!

Something I should have checked at the beginning - well, at least all those hours of research has improved my knowledge of discourse files/support/forums…

Everything is working beautifully now.

Thanks for your help CH. Appreciated!