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Advanced Service Configuration: Enabling Email Alerts

To configure the server to send alarms via email, you need to set a series of alarm properties. No changes are necessary to any logback.xml file. The most important properties:

alarms.enable.email, alarms.email.threshold

Off (false) and critical by default.

alarms.email.smtp-host, alarms.email.smtp-port

Email server destination. The port defaults to 25.

SMTP authentication and encryption

The SMTP client used by dCache supports authentication via plain user passwords as well as both the STARTTLS and SSL protocols. Note that STARTTLS differs from SSL in that, in STARTTLS, the connection is initially non-encrypted and only after the STARTTLS command is issued by the client (if the server supports it) does the connection switch to SSL. In SSL mode, the connection is encrypted right from the start. Which of these to use is usually determined by the server.

If username and password are left undefined, unauthenticated sends will be attempted, which may not be supported by the server.

The values to use for plain user/password authentication default to undefined. NOTE: while using SSL will guarantee encryption over the wire, there is currently no way of storing an encrypted password. Two possible workarounds: a. Set up an admin account with a plaintext password that is protected by root privileges but which can be shared among adminstrators or those with access to the host containing this file; b. Set up a host-based authentication to the server; the email admin will usually require the client IP, and it will need to be static in that case.

sender and recipient

Only one sender may be listed, but multiple recipients can be indicated by a comma-separated list of email addresses.

See the shared defaults /usr/share/dcache/alarms.properties file for additional settings.