Secure SMTP mailer backend
Michiel Beijen <michiel <at> beefreeit.nl>
2009-02-03 10:47:07 GMT
Good afternoon,
My name is Michiel Beijen and I am a software consultant from The Netherlands. I have been working with service management software since 2002 now. I used to work at a company that sold pretty expensive enterprise-class service management software, BMC Remedy ITSM, as an implementation consultant. Since about a year now I'm a freelance consultant. My field is business information management, which covers subjects such as change management, demand management, requirements specification, but also testing and training. I also do (ITIL based) process management, -implementation and -optimization at customers.
In my opinion that OTRS is quite a powerful tool which already has a lot of the capabilities the commercial tool which I used to work with before had. Out of curiosity, and also because I think OTRS has great potential and I may be able to implement it at some customer in the future, I am now toying around with OTRS for quite some time, and answering questions on the mailing list here and there.
I have created a new mail backend for OTRS to be able to communicate to servers that only allow 'Secure' SMTP; that is, SMTP servers that only allow SSL or TLS connections. An example of such a server is the server for Google Apps users,
smtp.google.com. I use Google Apps for Domains for the email of my company.
In bugzilla there are a couple of bugs that seem to be related to the lack of support for 'secure SMTP': 3041, 3363, 3394 and 3612.
The implementation is pretty straight forward. It uses the perl module Net::SMTP::SSL which is just a CPAN module. The module has the exact same implementation as Net::SMTP; so I found out I only had to copy and rename the Kernel/System/Email/SMTP.pm file and modify it a little bit to get it working. I have tested it and for me, it works. I have included the new file, and also patches to Framework.xml with slightly better wording (English only!) and I've updated otrs.checkModules to also search for Net::SMTP::SSL and Authen::SASL which are both needed to talk to SMTP hosts such as
smtp.google.comI'm not a Perl wizard like you guys are, I'm not that technical - usually I would be the person communicating between the users and the developers. That's why I do not have an idea what should go in the $Id: tag in the document. Can you look at that?
And also, can you please look at my modifications and consider them for inclusion?
I have also created an enhancement request, bug 3630 in Bugzilla, for this issue with the files attached.
I would love to hear any comments, thoughts or other remarks on this small patch, either via this list or offline, my contact details are below.
In the future I might submit some more work. As I said, since I'm not a developer, these will more likely be updates and enhancements to the documentation or things like that.
I already noticed the documentation is published on CVS. Should I send updates to the CVS documentation to this list?
Kind regards,
--
Michiel Beijen
Software Consultant
+31 6 - 457 42 418
Bee Free IT +
http://beefreeit.nl
### Eclipse Workspace Patch 1.0
#P otrs
Index: Kernel/Config/Files/Framework.xml
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/otrs/Kernel/Config/Files/Framework.xml,v
retrieving revision 1.193
diff -u -r1.193 Framework.xml
--- Kernel/Config/Files/Framework.xml 13 Jan 2009 12:02:42 -0000 1.193
+++ Kernel/Config/Files/Framework.xml 2 Feb 2009 13:03:38 -0000
<at> <at> -409,7 +409,7 <at> <at>
</Setting>
</ConfigItem>
<ConfigItem Name="SendmailModule" Required="1" Valid="1">
- <Description Lang="en">Module to send emails. "Sendmail" directly uses the sendmail binary of your
operating system. "SMTP" uses a specified (external) mailserver. "DoNotSendEmail" is not sending
emails and useful for test systems.</Description>
+ <Description Lang="en">Module to send emails. "Sendmail" directly uses the sendmail binary of your
operating system. "SMTP" uses a specified (external) mailserver. "SecureSMTP" uses SSL or TLS
encryption to connect to your external mailserver, which is required by some servers. "DoNotSendEmail"
is not sending emails and useful for test systems.</Description>
<Description Lang="de">Modul zum Versenden von Emails. "Sendmail" verwendet das sendmail-Binary
Ihres Betriebssystems. "SMTP" versendet die Nachrichten ber einen externen Mailserver.
"DoNotSendEmail" versendet keine Email und ist ntzlich um in Test-System den Emailversans zu deaktivieren.</Description>
<Group>Framework</Group>
<SubGroup>Core::Sendmail</SubGroup>
<at> <at> -427,7 +427,7 <at> <at>
</Setting>
</ConfigItem>
<ConfigItem Name="SendmailModule::Host" Required="1" Valid="1">
- <Description Lang="en">If "SMTP" was selected for SendmailModule you have to specify the mailhost that
sends out the mails.</Description>
+ <Description Lang="en">If you selected "SMTP" or "SecureSMTP" as SendmailModule, you have to specify
the mailhost that sends out the mails.</Description>
<Description Lang="de">Wenn Sie fr SendmailModule "SMTP" ausgwhlt haben, mssen Sie hier den Mailserver
angeben, der zum Versenden von Nachrichten genutzt werden soll.</Description>
<Group>Framework</Group>
<SubGroup>Core::Sendmail</SubGroup>
<at> <at> -436,7 +436,7 <at> <at>
</Setting>
</ConfigItem>
<ConfigItem Name="SendmailModule::Port" Required="0" Valid="0">
- <Description Lang="en">If "SMTP" was selected for SendmailModule specify the port where your
mailserver is listening for incoming connections.</Description>
+ <Description Lang="en">If you selected "SMTP" or "SecureSMTP" as SendmailModule, specify the port
where your mailserver is listening for incoming connections. If you're using "SMTP" this will default to
port 25. If you're using "SecureSMTP" you most probably will need to specify port 465. </Description>
<Description Lang="de">Wenn Sie fr SendmailModule den Wert "SMTP" ausgewhlt haben, knnen Sie hier den
Port angeben, auf dem Ihr Mailserver Mails entgegennimmt.</Description>
<Group>Framework</Group>
<SubGroup>Core::Sendmail</SubGroup>
<at> <at> -445,7 +445,7 <at> <at>
</Setting>
</ConfigItem>
<ConfigItem Name="SendmailModule::AuthUser" Required="0" Valid="0">
- <Description Lang="en">If "SMTP" was selected for SendmailModule and you need to authenticate to your
mailserver, specify the username.</Description>
+ <Description Lang="en">If you selected "SMTP" or "SecureSMTP" as SendmailModule and you need to
authenticate to your mailserver, specify the username.</Description>
<Description Lang="de">Wenn Sie fr SendmailModule den Wert "SMTP" ausgewhlt haben und sich an Ihrem
Mailserver anmelden mssen, geben Sie hier bitte den Benutzernamen fr die Authentifizierung an.</Description>
<Group>Framework</Group>
<SubGroup>Core::Sendmail</SubGroup>
<at> <at> -454,7 +454,7 <at> <at>
</Setting>
</ConfigItem>
<ConfigItem Name="SendmailModule::AuthPassword" Required="0" Valid="0">
- <Description Lang="en">If "SMTP" was selected for SendmailModule and you need to authenticate to your
mailserver, specify the password.</Description>
+ <Description Lang="en">If you selected "SMTP" or "SecureSMTP" as SendmailModule and you need to
authenticate to your mailserver, specify the password.</Description>
<Description Lang="de">Wenn Sie fr SendmailModule den Wert "SMTP" ausgewhlt haben und sich an Ihrem
Mailserver anmelden mssen, geben Sie hier das Passwort fr die Authentifizierung an.</Description>
<Group>Framework</Group>
<SubGroup>Core::Sendmail</SubGroup>
Index: bin/otrs.checkModules
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/otrs/bin/otrs.checkModules,v
retrieving revision 1.25
diff -u -r1.25 otrs.checkModules
--- bin/otrs.checkModules 24 Jul 2008 15:57:50 -0000 1.25
+++ bin/otrs.checkModules 2 Feb 2009 13:04:16 -0000
<at> <at> -124,7 +124,12 <at> <at>
{
Module => 'Authen::SASL',
Required => 0,
- Comment => 'for SMTP backend',
+ Comment => 'for authentication to your SMTP server',
+ },
+ {
+ Module => 'Net::SMTP::SSL',
+ Required => 0,
+ Comment => 'for secure connections to your SMTP server',
},
],
},
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