Email Services Novice and issues sending to Gmail

Chad Augur

I have never really done much with email in all my years of working on the web, and now I have a need. I have the NodeBB mailer setup with an SMTP email on my domain, and it works for pretty much everything except sending to Gmail accounts, and that is a problem.

I read:

https://community.nodebb.org/topic/15072/nodebb-email-options?_=1711731561044

It hits the high points but did not really help me on next steps. Is there a good guide for diagnosing and resolving issues? Or how to best setup an email provider to make sending more successful?

All input is appreciated.

phenomlab

@Chad-Augur Can you confirm if you have correct DNS records for spf, dmarc and dkim configured on your domain?

Chad Augur

@phenomlab

There are:
@ TXT v=spf1........
_domainkey TXT v=DKIM1......

I do not see a "dmarc" entry.

Chad Augur

I did finally get a failure which is somewhat helpful, maybe the _dmarc will help this:

{ANaDDRESS}@gmail.com: host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[142.250.107.26] said:
550-5.7.1 [23.83.223.168] Messages missing a valid address in From: header,
or 550-5.7.1 having no From: header, are not accepted. For more
information, go to 550-5.7.1
https://support.google.com/mail/?p=RfcMessageNonCompliant and review 550
5.7.1 RFC 5322 specifications.
j2-20020aa78d02000000b006ea6d321d3bsi4398153pfe.89 - gsmtp (in reply to end
of DATA command)
Reporting-MTA: dns; relay.mailchannels.net
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: 3B6954C2AEC
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; {ANaDDRESS}@DOMAIN.EXT
Arrival-Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2024 23:22:31 +0000 (UTC)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; {ANaDDRESS}@gmail.com
Original-Recipient: rfc822;{ANaDDRESS}@gmail.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.7.1
Remote-MTA: dns; gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550-5.7.1 [23.83.223.168] Messages missing a valid
address in From: header, or 550-5.7.1 having no From: header, are not
accepted. For more information, go to 550-5.7.1
https://support.google.com/mail/?p=RfcMessageNonCompliant and review 550
5.7.1 RFC 5322 specifications.
j2-20020aa78d02000000b006ea6d321d3bsi4398153pfe.89 - gsmtp

Chad Augur

OK.... So I have added the _dmarc record and it has propagated.

To see if this could work I have setup a separate test using "nodemailer" with the following:

import nodemailer from 'nodemailer';

const mailit = (() => {
let transporter = nodemailer.createTransport({
host: 'smtp.HOST.EXT',
port: 465,
secure: true, // true for 465, false for other ports
auth: {
user: '[email protected]',
pass: 'XXXXXX', // Use the actual password
},
});

let mailOptions = {
from: '"Test" [email protected]',
to: '[email protected]', // Use a test Gmail address
subject: 'Hello from Node',
text: 'This is a test email.',
};

transporter.sendMail(mailOptions, (error, info) => {
if (error) {
console.log(error);
} else {
console.log('Email sent: ' + info.response);
}
});
})()

export default mailit;

And this sends successfully to the test Gmail account I am using, no hitches. Leaving a very real chance that whatever is going on within NodeBB is not quite right. I am not sure where to look for that script as of right now. But the successful nodemailer test makes it the next place I will need to look.

Chad Augur

For now I have hardcoded these two lines in emailer.js:

src/emailer.js#L317-L318

https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/blob/master/src/emailer.js#L317-L318

from: '[email protected]',
from_name: 'Organization Name Forums'

And with my specific values, it works. So something is amiss with:

from: meta.config['email:from'] || no-reply@${getHostname()},
from_name: meta.config['email:from_name'] || 'NodeBB',

but I do not know what. It could be I missed configuring something.

Sylwester Cyba

Please take a look for something like Manage connections between your Google Account and third-parties within their knowledge base.

I don't know how it works on standard GMail service but configuring Google Workspace in such manner (allowing NodeBB as 3rd party app to send e-mails) solved similar problem for me.

Edit: sorry, you want to deliver e-mails. So you would like to configure things like reverse dns.

PitaJ

Word that from would bee messed up. Can you try undoing your change and console.loging those values to see what they end up being?