Re: bsmtp authentication

Bill Arlofski via Bacula-users <[email protected]> Wed, 26 Mar 2025 14:25:34 +0000
Newsgroups	gmane.comp.bacula.user
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
On 3/26/25 5:25 AM, Mehrdad Ravanbod wrote:
 >
 > Hi guys
 >
 > I am trying to set up the messaging part of bacula to send alerts and
 > using the built in bsmtp, but running into problems
 >
 > The SMTP server that we are using needs authentication for the senders
 > adress, and it seems like bsmtp does not handle this, i.e there is no
 > way to send a password for the sender to the smtp-server, am i correct
 > or did i miss something??

You are correct.  bsmtp is a simple one-shot SMTP client with no authentication mechanisms.


 > And if this is the case, what is the alernative aside from using another program instead of bsmtp??

One alternative is to use another SMTP client like `mailx` or whatever you are comfortable with.

Also, something to recognize is that the `mailcommand` setting in Messages{} resources can be used to call any command or 
script you like. And, said script can do whatever you want to happen when Bacula sends an email - ie: send custom stat
us 
messages to slack, or to other monitoring tools, etc. The `mailcommand` does not have to just send email. :)

And, since bsmtp is a "one-shot" SMTP client, if the mail server is unreachable in the moment Bacula is trying to send an 
email, the message will be lost.

Due to this, I always recommend setting up a simple Postfix (a real MTA) installation on the Bacula Director system that will 
store and forward the email messages from Bacula - retying as necessary in the case of networking issues or mail server being 
temporarily offline - so your Bacula email messages do not get lost.

You can then safely have your `mailcommand` still call `bsmtp` to send emails to `-h localhost` on whatever port you 
configure the local Postfix to listen on. Then simply configure Postfix to accept messages from localhost with no 
authentication/encryption, and then relay the email messages to your mail server using any necessary SMTP authentication 
required by your email server.


H
ope this helps,
Bill

-- 
Bill Arlofski
[email protected]

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