Setting up creating a ticket from e-mail

phoebe01 2017-02-28 16:08:55 UTC #1

Hello,

I'm sorry, I am very new to Redmine and using PuTTY.

My objective is that I am trying to create a ticketing system in Redmine so that when an e-mail is sent to an Exchange email, it will automatically create a ticket. If an email is replied to, that ticket will be updated.

I saw this: http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineReceivingEmails

The current process I am trying below is "Forwarding emails from your e-mail server."

And I'm stuck at the very beginning.

Copy rdm-mailhandler.rb to your mail server, make sure its permissions allow execution, and configure your MTA (Mail Transport Agent).

My first question is: is the rdm-mailhandler.rb the code under Usage?

Secondly, it asks to copy it to my mail server, but I'm not quite sure how to do this. Our Exchange server is run by another time, so if I were to request them to update the mail server, how would I go about asking them?

If the above doesn't work with the objective, then I'm willing to try with fetching e-mails from an IMAP server.
A rake task (redmine:email:receive_imap) can be used to fetch incoming emails from an IMAP server.

Where would I put this rake task line? As soon as I SSH in on PuTTY? Is there a specific directory?

I apologise for all the questions. I'm completely new to this, and I have no clue how to get started.

jsalmeron 2017-03-01 16:21:45 UTC #2

Hi,

Are you using a Bitnami Cloud Image? If so, then redmine is installed in /opt/bitnami/apps/redmine/htdocs. There, you will find the file extra/mail_handler/rdm-mailhandler.rb. in this installation folder you will also find the Rakefile that you would need for your third question.

Regarding this:

Secondly, it asks to copy it to my mail server, but I'm not quite sure how to do this. Our Exchange server is run by another time, so if I were to request them to update the mail server, how would I go about asking them?

Indeed, you will have to ask the other team to have this file copied.

Is there anything else that we can help you with?

Best regards,

Javier J. Salmerón

phoebe01 2017-03-14 21:36:57 UTC #3

Hi, Yes, I think I'm using the Bitnami cloud image. So I tried the third option (Pop3 is available to fetch e-mails from). But I'm unable to do it because "no rakefile found." What should I do in this case? Bellow is a copy/paste of what I've tried today.

Using username "bitnami".
Authenticating with public key "bitnami-hosting-key"
Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-95-generic x86_64)
*** System restart required ***

  | _ |_) |_ _ _  __ _ _ __ (_)
  | _ \ |  _| ' \/ _` | '  \| |
  |___/_|\__|_|_|\__,_|_|_|_|_|

*** Welcome to Bitnami ***
*** Bitnami Wiki: https://wiki.bitnami.com/ ***
*** Bitnami Forums: https://community.bitnami.com/ ***
Last login: Wed Mar 1 16:36:12 2017 from 50-197-221-3-static.hfc.comcastbusines s.net
bitnami@ip-172-31-50-139:~$ */30 * * * * redmineuser rake -f /path/to/redmine/appdir/Rakefile redmine:email:receive_imap RAILS_ENV="production" host=10.50.80.13 username=e-mail@email.com password=passwordhere
-bash: */30: No such file or directory
bitnami@ip-172-31-50-139:~$
bitnami@ip-172-31-50-139:~$
bitnami@ip-172-31-50-139:~$ rake redmine:email:receive_pop3 RAILS_ENV="production" \
rake aborted!
No Rakefile found (looking for: rakefile, Rakefile, rakefile.rb, Rakefile.rb)

(See full trace by running task with --trace)
bitnami@ip-172-31-50-139:~$ host=10.50.80.13.foo.bar username=e-mail@email.com.foo password=passwordhere
bitnami@ip-172-31-50-139:~$ */30 * * * * redmineuser rake -f /path/to/redmine/appdir/Rakefile redmine:email:receive_pop3 RAILS_ENV="production" \ host=10.50.80.13.foo.bar username=e-mail@email.com.foo password=passwordhere
-bash: */30: No such file or directory
bitnami@ip-172-31-50-139:~$ rake -f /path/to/redmine/appdir/Rakefile redmine:email:receive_pop3 RAILS_ENV="production" \ host=10.50.80.13.foo.bar username=e-mail@email.com.foo password=passwordhere
rake aborted!
No Rakefile found (looking for: /path/to/redmine/appdir/Rakefile)

(See full trace by running task with --trace)
bitnami@ip-172-31-50-139:~$ cd /opt/bitnami/apps/redmine/htdocs
bitnami@ip-172-31-50-139:/opt/bitnami/apps/redmine/htdocs$ rake -f /path/to/redmine/appdir/Rakefile redmine:email:receive_pop3 RAILS_ENV="production" \ host=10.50.80.13.foo.bar username=e-mail@email.com.foo password=passwordhere
rake aborted!
No Rakefile found (looking for: /path/to/redmine/appdir/Rakefile)

(See full trace by running task with --trace)
bitnami@ip-172-31-50-139:/opt/bitnami/apps/redmine/htdocs$

silvio 2017-03-15 10:24:26 UTC #4

Hi,

Just to clarify: are you writing in your crontab /path/to/redmine/appdir/Rakefile e-mail@email.com.fooandpassword=passwordhere?

If so, then you have to substitute these placeholder by its corrects values.

Best regards,
Silvio Fernández

phoebe01 2017-03-21 14:26:13 UTC #5

Hi Silvio,

Yes, I do substitute these placeholders with the correct values. I just changed them out for the ticket help request. Is there something else I might be missing?

In my crontab, I write:

*/5 * * * * redmineuser rake -f /path/to/appdir/Rakefile redmine:email:receive_pop3 RAILS_ENV="production" host=10.50.xx.xx username=email@email.com password=password

But when I try to save, I get this issue:

"/tmp/crontab.hcMOdC/crontab":23: bad command
errors in crontab file, can't install.
Do you want to retry the same edit? (y/n)

Is there something I should change or do?

edit:
OK, so I removed -f /path/to/appdir/Rakefile, and it says it installed for the crontab. But it still doesn't rake in the e-mails.

if I try the line outside of Crontab, it says:

-bash: */5: No such file or directory

phoebe01 2017-03-27 18:30:13 UTC #6

Here is what my Crontab says. I was able to add the -f /path/to, though I'm not sure if this is written correctly. But the emails aren't properly pulled in. What should I do? Is Pop3 not possible?

phoebe01 2017-03-28 15:33:49 UTC #7

So I was able to run this code outside the crontab with this below:

rake -f /opt/bitnami/apps/redmine/htdocs/Rakefile redmine:email:receive_imap RAILS_ENV="production" host=xxx port=993 ssl=SSL username=email@email.com password=xxx unknown_user=accept no_permission_check=1 project=foo tracker=support --trace

But I wasn't able to run it in crontab when I added the:

I also tried */1 * * * * and */5 * * * * as well as 1 * * * *

Is there something I should do within crontab so that it can rake the e-mail every minute? It seems like the crontab itself doesn't run right, but the code does without the timer. I feel like my mistake is lying some where around here.

I did the above using gmail's IMAP, but the true e-mail is actually pop3. I was hoping to first rule out the crontab issue above before moving onto the next question which is, is Pop3 working for us?

Below is the rake code to use Pop3 that isn't working for me.

rake redmine:email:receive_pop3 RAILS_ENV="production" host=xxx port=110 username=email*email.com password=xxx unknown_user=accept no_permission_check=1 project=foo tracker=support –trace

silvio 2017-03-28 15:59:44 UTC #8

Hi,

which user are you using in our crontab?

Remember that you can always change the user doing su USERNAME bash -c 'YOURCOMMANDHERE'.

Best regards,
Silvio Fernández

phoebe01 2017-03-28 17:04:03 UTC #9

Hi Silvio,

I'm using username "bitnami".

Should there be a different one?

silvio 2017-03-29 14:43:06 UTC #10

Hi,

Could you try using root crontab, just moving into root user and typing crontab -e.

Best regards,
Silvio Fernández

wthsia 2017-04-03 14:59:14 UTC #11

I think your issue lies with your environment PATH.

Check out this post which has a script that I created to get emails to work:

marcos 2017-04-04 15:40:05 UTC #12

Thanks contributing, @wthsia! I hope this is useful for you @phoebe01.

Also, regarding the crontab, it seems the syntax is invalid. Could you show the entry again? Note "redmineuser" should not be there. Also, in the crontab file, there is an example that should work:

0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/

You could try to use a similar command and see if it works.

Regards,
Marcos

phoebe01 2017-05-09 20:12:31 UTC #13

Hi guys,

I'm sorry for the delayed response! thank you for trying to help me!

So i tried to modify something else before returning to the crontab issue, and I've broken my web app somehow. The production.log is absolutely blank, but I've hit error 500:

I am so lost on what I've done.

I was in configuration.yml changing the e-mail settings when this error first happened. After it happened, I reverted the information back to what I had originally before the 500 error. However, even after restarting multiple times, it's still giving me the 500 error.

jsalmeron 2017-05-10 10:25:26 UTC #14

Hi,

That's definitely looks problematic. Did you make backups of any kind? If so, the best option would be to simply rollback. Otherwise, I would advise you to increase the log level in the configuration settings:

Rails.logger.level = 5 # at any time

Let us see this that brings more insight about the issue.

Hope it helps.

Best regards,

Javier J. Salmerón

phoebe01 2017-05-10 14:48:19 UTC #15

Luckily, somehow I was able to fix it by stopping and starting it up again instead of just the normal restart service line.

So at my root crontab -e:

I'm using a gmail to test to see if this works before I use the actual e-mail to rake.

@wthsia: Thank you for the suggestion! Although, I must admit, I'm not sure if I understood the path you created. I'm incredibly new to all of this. Was this path inserted in where "/opt/bitnami/apps/redmine/htdocs/Rakefile" would normally be?

wthsia 2017-05-10 17:31:39 UTC #16

The path is taken from the "use_redmine" script. The path enables you to use the "bundle exec" command.

Basically "use_redmine" will give you a shell that has all the paths you need for bitnami redmine. I just took that and use it in my script.

jsalmeron 2017-05-11 07:59:32 UTC #17

Hi,

Thanks @wthsia for the tip Don't hesitate to let us know if you find more issues.

Best regards,

Javier J. Salmerón

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