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- Server operating system version
- CentOS 7.9
- Plesk version and microupdate number
- Plesk Obsidian 18.0.47
Hi there,
I have found what I believe to be a bug but as I do not have 5 helpful posts, I'm not able to use the relevant section.
We used to receive email notifications when errors occured with our fetch-url-type cron jobs until I assume some Plesk update this year changed something and we almost didn't receive any notification after that.
After a lot of tests and searching, here's what I think the situation is :
When you create a new subscription, if you don't activate the mail service, the user is not added to the sendmail DB (in var/lib/plesk/mail/outgoing/data.db). So, if you create a cron job and set it up to receive notifications, the cron daemon will try sending the mail but will not be allowed to (as evidenced by lines in /var/log/cron and /var/log/maillog) and you will have no idea that you're not receiving notifications (which can be a big problem if those are error notifications). If you activate the mail service and then deactivate it, it adds the user to the sendmail DB and fixes the issue.
From discussions I've had with the company that manages our servers, the fact that the user is not added to the sendmail DB if mail service hasn't been activated is wanted behavior by Plesk and a security measure, which I can understand but that leaves us with a problematic situation that needs to be addressed :
- not every subscription needs mail service activated (in fact, very few of our subscriptions use Plesk for their emails)
- when you go to set up a cron job with notifications, Plesk should then check if the user is allowed to send those notification and add the user to the sendmail DB if required!
You can't let people create cron jobs with notifications without even knowing if you're going to be able to send those notifications, this is obviously not acceptable.
For the record, I've tested this on two different Plesk installations, just checked again now with a new subscription on a Plesk obsidian 18.0.47 running on CentOS 7.9
At the very least, we should have a warning on the cron page letting people know that they might have to activate then deactivate the mail service to ensure the notifications will be sent (but that would be a very bad solution, Plesk should just allow the user when a cron job is set up).
I'd really like this to be fixed as I've had to manually activate/deactivate the mail service of about 50 subscriptions to fix the issue for now but I'm sure there will come a time when we'll have to add a cron job to a new subscription and forget to do that little activation/deactivation dance and we'll end up missing important notifications.
If someone of better standing that mine could maybe validate my findings and report it officially as a bug, that would be awesome.
I'm obviously available to answer questions or run tests if needed.
Thanks,
Kind regards
I have found what I believe to be a bug but as I do not have 5 helpful posts, I'm not able to use the relevant section.
We used to receive email notifications when errors occured with our fetch-url-type cron jobs until I assume some Plesk update this year changed something and we almost didn't receive any notification after that.
After a lot of tests and searching, here's what I think the situation is :
When you create a new subscription, if you don't activate the mail service, the user is not added to the sendmail DB (in var/lib/plesk/mail/outgoing/data.db). So, if you create a cron job and set it up to receive notifications, the cron daemon will try sending the mail but will not be allowed to (as evidenced by lines in /var/log/cron and /var/log/maillog) and you will have no idea that you're not receiving notifications (which can be a big problem if those are error notifications). If you activate the mail service and then deactivate it, it adds the user to the sendmail DB and fixes the issue.
From discussions I've had with the company that manages our servers, the fact that the user is not added to the sendmail DB if mail service hasn't been activated is wanted behavior by Plesk and a security measure, which I can understand but that leaves us with a problematic situation that needs to be addressed :
- not every subscription needs mail service activated (in fact, very few of our subscriptions use Plesk for their emails)
- when you go to set up a cron job with notifications, Plesk should then check if the user is allowed to send those notification and add the user to the sendmail DB if required!
You can't let people create cron jobs with notifications without even knowing if you're going to be able to send those notifications, this is obviously not acceptable.
For the record, I've tested this on two different Plesk installations, just checked again now with a new subscription on a Plesk obsidian 18.0.47 running on CentOS 7.9
At the very least, we should have a warning on the cron page letting people know that they might have to activate then deactivate the mail service to ensure the notifications will be sent (but that would be a very bad solution, Plesk should just allow the user when a cron job is set up).
I'd really like this to be fixed as I've had to manually activate/deactivate the mail service of about 50 subscriptions to fix the issue for now but I'm sure there will come a time when we'll have to add a cron job to a new subscription and forget to do that little activation/deactivation dance and we'll end up missing important notifications.
If someone of better standing that mine could maybe validate my findings and report it officially as a bug, that would be awesome.
I'm obviously available to answer questions or run tests if needed.
Thanks,
Kind regards
