NAS System emails - Store and Forward?

[fixit9660]

I recently changed ISP and the new Network Default Router address changed from .1 to .254. Amongst other things the NAS email stopped working. I was distracted getting so many other things, (with Static IP details), fixed that I forgot to change the NAS. This morning I noticed I hadn't seen any NAS emails for a while and found out why and fixed it.
I would have liked to then have seen all the emails that the NAS hadn't been able to send start to appear, which they didn't.

1) Is there a way to see what wasn't sent please?
2) Is there a way to get the NAS email into a "Store and Forward" mode, where it stores any/all email it can't send, until it can please?
3) Is there a way to set up a windoze 7 box to look for email received and bring up an alarm if it doesn't get them please?

I'm currently running on FreeNAS-11.3-U5 but will be moving to 12.0 soon.

 

[artlessknave]

in terms of email, not afaik. those emails were already "sent", freenas doesnt care that they failed. it tried.
you would have to check the logs, or the GUI alerts. by default anything important that it would have emailed on should give you a GUI alert.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Is there a way to get the NAS email into a "Store and Forward" mode, where it stores any/all email it can't send, until it can please?

You would need a local mail server for that. Which is quite easily implemented in a jail if you know that kind of stuff. The hardest part will probably be to have the mail server authenticate to your ISP for outgoing. FreeBSD Sendmail can't do it out of the box, would need a recompile. But you could install Postfix which comes with SASL auth by default, IIRC.

I run an OPNsense appliance in addition to TrueNAS here - there's a Postfix plugin for that. Including friendly UI.

 

[fixit9660]

Thank you for your responses, much appreciated.
I wanted to avoid having to trawl through logs, etc, I can never rememeber where they are, what to look for, etc, which is why I had the emails sent, but I'll check the GUI Alerts. Thank you.
Local email server, hmm. The last time I did that was for a company and the grief that went with it, killing spam, etc was incredible. And it was a long time ago. I was hoping for something simpler, like a mail config option to change. I don't think I can manage a jail, or mail server. But Thank you anyway.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Local email server, hmm. The last time I did that was for a company and the grief that went with it, killing spam, etc was incredible. And it was a long time ago. I was hoping for something simpler, like a mail config option to change. I don't think I can manage a jail, or mail server.

The point is that without a server there is nothing in place that would even be able to spool your mail and retry. As configured, TrueNAS contacts your configured mail server via SMTP and if that one is not reachable, the mail is dropped. A "thing" that spools mail and retries is a mail server or MTA (mail transfer agent).

As for your trouble with your own infrastructure, spam etc - if you are using a local server process just to

• accept mail from local systems with or without authentication - your choice
• spool that mail
• deliver all that mail to a single external smarthost with authentication

you won't have any of these troubles. It's pretty simple to configure, actually, if having to use the command line doesn't scare you away. Just don't make it reachable from "outside".

I am using a Postifx installation at home, because I have various sources of notification emails:

• TrueNAS
• two Confluence instances
• monit - a network availability monitor like Nagios, but simpler
• my UPS
• ...

If I configure all of these to use my ISP's mail server directly, I won't get any mail when my private DSL line is down. Although this is not a data center and I cannot do much if the line fails, at least I want to have those notifications after the fact to know about possible problems. So I spool all these mails with Postfix and I will get them - eventually.