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Ankur_5273's avatar
Ankur_5273
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Jun 07, 2014

Email notifications not triggering in F5 LTM

Hi Experts

 

We upgraded Big IP 1600 LTM version 10.X to version 11.2.1 recently . I had configured email notifications earlier in LTM (such as to trigger Alerts via Email if Node or Pool member down ) which use to trigger successfully ; however email notifications are not triggering anymore. I have observed 2 things

 

a) The SMTP configuration (From , To , Subject) in "alert.conf" file disappeared after upgrading to 11.2.1 .

 

b) In the 10.X version "postfix" service use to be there which is now replaced by "ssmtp" .I configured the parameter "mailhub=mail.your.domain" in the "ssmtp.conf" file ; however i am getting following error while sending Test message

 

send-mail: Cannot open mail:25

 

Note : I have checked that i can telnet successfully to the SMTP Relay server on port 25

 

Kindly assist on it

 

Thanks , Ankur

 

management

9 Replies

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  • Patrik_Jonsson's avatar
    Patrik_Jonsson
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Jun 08, 2014

    Hi!

     

    Have you tried following this article?

     

    http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/13000/100/sol13180.html

     

    /Patrik

     

  • Ankur_5273's avatar
    Ankur_5273
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jun 08, 2014

    Hi Patrick

     

    Yes i already tried solution mentioned in the link in the initial stages itself however no success .

     

    Thanks , Ankur

     

  • Patrik_Jonsson's avatar
    Patrik_Jonsson
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Jun 08, 2014

    Hi

    Did you try to send it via the command line?

    echo "ssmtp test mail" | mail -vs "Test email for SOL13180" myemail@mydomain.com

    /Patrik

  • Ankur_5273's avatar
    Ankur_5273
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jun 08, 2014

    Hi Patrik

     

    Yes i already tried that as stated in my first query . After trying to send a Test mail ; i get the following message

     

    send-mail: Cannot open mail:25

     

    Note : Telnet to the SMTP server on port 25 happens fine from CLI of F5 LTM .

     

    Regards Ankur Sachdev

     

  • Patrik_Jonsson's avatar
    Patrik_Jonsson
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Jun 08, 2014

    Have you tried to use tcpdump while running the test to verify that the right ip+port is used?

     

    Sometimes the SMTP servers requires white listing of ips allowed to send.

     

    Have you successfully sent an email with Telnet as well (ie not only connected)?

     

    /Pareik

     

  • nitass's avatar
    nitass
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Jun 08, 2014

    are you using fqdn or ip in ssmtp.conf?

    if fqdn, you have configured dns, haven't you?

    [root@ve11a:Active:In Sync] config  grep something /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
mailhub=something.somewhere.com

[root@ve11a:Active:In Sync] config  echo "ssmtp test mail" | mail -vs "Test email for SOL13180" nitass@xxx.com
send-mail: Cannot open something.somewhere.com:25
  • Ankur_5273's avatar
    Ankur_5273
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jun 08, 2014

    Hi nitass,

     

    I have tried configuring both (IP Address as well as FQDN of SMTP server) ; however no success . Also , i have configured SMTP FQDN mapping to IP under System -->Configuration -->Device -->Hosts

     

    Considering my mail server is something.somewhere.com , if i try to send a test mail , i get the following

     

    send-mail: Cannot open mail:25

     

    Hi Patrik,

     

    I havent tried sending mail with telnet . Its just that i have used the command "telnet 25 " from F5 Root CLI and got the message .

     

    Connected to

     

    Also , SMTP Relay server has F5 IP allowed in the whitelist

     

    Thanks & Regards,

     

    Ankur

     

  • nitass's avatar
    nitass
    Icon for Employee rankEmployee
    Jun 08, 2014

    so, can you try tcpdump (when running echo..)?

    via tmm interface
 tcpdump -nni 0.0:nnn -s0 -w /var/tmp/output.pcap port 25 -v

via mgmt interface
 tcpdump -nni eth0 -s0 -w /var/tmp/output.pcap port 25 -v
  • Patrik_Jonsson's avatar
    Patrik_Jonsson
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Jun 08, 2014

    Connected to just verifies that the tcp hand shake works. Try sending an email following this guide and use nitass tcpdump commands above to capture the traffic.

    http://exchange.mvps.org/smtp_frames.htm

    Also like nitass suggested, try sending with:

    echo "ssmtp test mail" | mail -vs "Test email for SOL13180" myemail@mydomain.com

    And use the tcpdump commands when doing this.

    /Patrik