Do you require email support with unRAID

I am starting this poll to help understand how many people who run a unRAID server(s) require and/or use a mail client to get alerts. For any or all things like array status (started/stopped/checking), disk status (failures/smart info/ temps), power failure/conditions.

Greatly appreciate if everyone took a minute out to vote.

Just to be clear, your vote in this Poll is not that you DO or DO NOT want a mail client to come with unRAID, just if you depend on email support.

I am starting this poll to help understand how many people who run a unRAID server(s) require and/or use a mail client to get alerts. For any or all things like array status (started/stopped/checking), disk status (failures/smart info/ temps), power failure/conditions.

 

Greatly appreciate if everyone took a minute out to vote.

I am in the Can't live without, now that I have it installed; BUT with that said I don't think it needs to be "built in" to unRAID like what you are wanting to do.  If there is some stuff that needs to be turned on in the kernel, then great, ask Tom to do that, otherwise leave it to the community to perfect and build the "plugin."

Everyone wants something different for email alerts, and I don't want Tom spending the time to bake all that in.

Just my 2 cent

I am starting this poll to help understand how many people who run a unRAID server(s) require and/or use a mail client to get alerts. For any or all things like array status (started/stopped/checking), disk status (failures/smart info/ temps), power failure/conditions.

 

Greatly appreciate if everyone took a minute out to vote.

I am in the Can't live without, now that I have it installed; BUT with that said I don't think it needs to be "built in" to unRAID like what you are wanting to do.  If there is some stuff that needs to be turned on in the kernel, then great, ask Tom to do that, otherwise leave it to the community to perfect and build the "plugin."

 

Everyone wants something different for email alerts, and I don't want Tom spending the time to bake all that in.

 

Just my 2 cent

I understand, I just want the mail client, I agree with you the community would better serve the actual scripts, not asking Tom for that piece.

Oh, thanks for moving the poll!, I forgot about the lounge.

I know Tom didn't sell 42 license's not including the free 3 drive members.

Come on people put in a vote! 

honestly..

email support now makes unraid set and forget.

I can put the server in the basement and not think about it. it is just there and emails me what it is doing.. or when it is broken.

a few things i would love to see different.. but this is not a feature request thread.

overall though. I think it is fine as a plugin and not part of the core. at least for now. the less trivial stuff tom has to support, the more important bugs get fixed and new features added..

he is after all 1 man.

that's my 2 cents.

I voted can't live without it. It's never sent me a mail yet. But knowing it's there to keep me informed of any problems is something I wouldn't want to live without.

Since every other NAS I've used had email support, I think unRAID should come with basic email support.

There are many methods such as the SSMTP which can be a simple drop in send only sendmail replacement

along with /usr/bin/mailx

Two binaries could give us what we need.

Also, if cURL were installed rather then wget, we would gain SMTP (POP3/IMAP) access too.

I've lobbied for cURL a while back and I may lobby for it again as it can provide

FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, SFTP, SCP, POP3, IMAP, TELNET, SMTP SMTPS

All protocols we could use to automate various facilities.

In any case some form of Mail functionality should be part of the base system.

ssmtp/mailx would allow cron jobs to email us without clogging the filesystem with queued data.

I have gotten exim to work in the past too. With that it requires a tmpfs on /var as exim requires a supported filesystem

The rootfs is not supported by exim. In addition if /var were on a tmpfs rather then rootfs, it could be swapped out thus saving crashes if /var/log or /var/spool/mqueue starts to build up.

SSMTP by default is a must. However, it must be easily configurable via the webGui. Madburg and I have just incorporated SSMTP into SimpleFeatures, hope Tom looks to this for inspiration.

one email i would LOVE to see...

"Disk4 is experiencing smart errors: the error is XXXX"

well, i should say i don't WANT to see that email, but i would love to be able to receive such an email if i had a drive issue.

Install SimpleFeatures, or use unMenu status updates.

Either one will send you an email regarding SMART failures.

I have run status updates from day one.

I have gotten a ton of updates., never one that said i had a smart error or bad parity when I had both.

I just tested Email Notifications addition of Simple Features and it is a great addition. Very easy to set up also. Thank you very much Madburg and speeding_ant!

I'm in the nice to have category. Albeit a VERY nice to have. I could live without email ability if I couldn't get it, but since I have the option, I have it installed. I can run a preclear in screen and receive email updates as the preclear progresses. I'm quite sure I'm not the only one who obsessively checks the ssh client for preclear status.

As most know, I put in a request both off-line and on-line with Tom, that I strongly encourage/recommend a mail client should come with unRAID. This poll was set up to allow Tom to see how many unRAID members use mail support in unRAID. He at the end of the day he will choose if he wants to add it or not.

It is not that I and many other dont know how to add it, its just at the end of the day if Tom adds it, its supported and we can take it from there with community scripts. And as I and WeeboTech (probably other) pointed out most every solution out there provides a mail client at the very least.

Thanks for chiming in WeeboTech. The cURL sounds very interesting...

So again just place a vote, dont worry, your not forcing Tom to do anything he does not want  

I've also requested for support of ssmtp, /bin/mailx and cURL.

with cURL,

I know we have wget, which is a great simple webget tool.

I asked for cURL because it supports the same and more. If PHP had the cURL support, then our front end WebGUI scripts could interface directly with remote hosts not only to pull, but to push information. FTP/HTTP POST.

Plus it supports sftp/scp for secure delivery of files to remote hosts.

I've only recently discovered that it supports SMTP and SMTPS. I know there are many hooks in PHP to the libcurl functionality. so it's win all the way for automation. Imagine a 1 click solution to posting your syslog for review.

with ssmtp It's a simple config too and it can be a simple drop in emulation for sendmail  Of course there would be no filesystem queueing, but it's a start.

with /bin/mailx, scripts can send email easily as it will interface with sendmail (ssmtp) to send the mail.

A big thing for me is cron mail.

I have run status updates from day one.

I have gotten a ton of updates., never one that said i had a smart error or bad parity when I had both.

Johnm, speeding_ant and i are looking at the best part of the scripts the community has as well as making them compliant with SATA and SAS controllers. I learned the trick JoeL. used in his preclear script and we will slowly make things happen. I also love the smarthistory package (forgot who made that one at the moment) and hope we can bring it into SF to pretty it up.

I have run status updates from day one.

I have gotten a ton of updates., never one that said i had a smart error or bad parity when I had both.

 

Johnm, speeding_ant and i are looking at the best part of the scripts the community has as well as making them compliant with SATA and SAS controllers. I learned the trick JoeL. used in his preclear script and we will slowly make things happen. I also love the smarthistory package (forgot who made that one at the moment) and hope we can bring it into SF to pretty it up.

Absolutely. The unraid_notify script does the bare minimum at the moment (eg, it detects SMART failures and an unhappy array), however it's relatively simple. Not saying that's a bad thing, but I'd like much more functionality from it. This is on the to-do list, but for now the SF package has sent me multiple emails detecting both array faults and SMART faults. That's a good start