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Miksim1's avatar
Miksim1
Settling in
3 days ago

Trying to get email notifications from my NAS device.

I have been trying for several days now to get the email notifications  working on my NAS LinkStation LS220DE but with no luck. The response from "Send Test Email" is always "Because of an error, the following process did not complete：Sending test email notification".

I have tried every combination of settings that seems remotely plausible on the LinkStation settings. On the router I have tried to remove any obstacle: The firewall has been disabled, port forwarding been allowed for any plausible ports and even the DMZ enabled for the Linkstation address. None of these has changed the "Because of an error, Blah, Blah, Blah."

My IP address does not appear on any blacklist.

I have checked that the app password for gmail is good by using a Windows command:-
        curl -v smtps://smtp.gmail.com -u MMMMMMM@gmail.com:PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
Replacing MM... and PPP... with my username and password. This gave the result 
* Connection #0 to host smtp.gmail.com left intact
showing that the username and app password were O.K.

I have tried my Office365 email account with the same result.

Neither the LinkStation nor my Router have any form of syslog. The Linkstation does not produce any kind or error code, and I can't afford a fiber-optic packet sniffer, so I am at a bit of a loss.

I have contacted my ISP (Virgin Media) but got only what long experiance has led me to expect: Wasted hours and wasted phone calls with people who do not know what a NAS is, who defaulted to thinking I was talking about a mobile phone, and who repeatedly tried to get me to take out a more expensive subscription.

Additional info:-
NAS Buffalo LinkStation LS220DE, firmware Version 1.84-0.01.
    Nas Navigator Version 3.0.4    
HDs, 2 off Seagate IronWolf 2GB
USB drive, Seagate Barracuda 2GB
Router, Virgin Media Hub 2.0 

Thanks for any assistance you can give.

Mike Simpson

App password
email notification
Network Attached Storage

5 Replies

  • Miksim1's avatar
    Miksim1
    Settling in
    3 days ago

    Thank you Alessandro, I will look at those, but my poor brain is already being crushed by the complexity of even the oldest email protocols and software. At the moment there seems to be the possibility of using a purely local mail client so that the LinkStation will send to something like 192.168.0.X:port Y, possibly hosted on an old Raspberry Pi.

    It would have been nice to only have my existing email addresses.

    Mike

  • Miksim1's avatar
    Miksim1
    Settling in
    19 hours ago

    O.K., I have confirmed at least that the LinkStation is probably correctly configured. I set up a Raspberry Pi with a MailCatcher SMTP server on my local network, set the LinkStation to send to 192.168.0.12:1025 and sent some test messages, all of which were recieved by the MailCatcher. Not an ideal solution as the mail isn't stored and anyway, I would like notifications to come into my normal gmail account.

    So now we can be fairly certain that the notifications are being intercepted or blocked somewhere outside of my local network: That is, in the dark lands far beyond my control.

    So I guess that I am asking if anybody has any ideas.  There must be a germ of an idea, a hint of a tool that may help, a memory of in which mystic tome the answer may be found..

    Again, thanks for any assistance.

    Mike

  • Roger_Gooner's avatar
    Roger_Gooner
    Alessandro Volta
    15 hours ago

    You must use an App Password for Gmail if you have 2-Step Verification (2FA) enabled on your Google account. Your regular Gmail password will not work for external applications like the LinkStation.

    • Miksim1's avatar
      Miksim1
      Settling in
      13 hours ago

      Mentioned in the first posting. App Password, two factor authentication, curl (Client URL) command, the whold shebang. Looking at my diary I first tried and gave up on getting email notifications back in 2020 before Gmail required app passwords (about 2022).

      Thank you for your sugestions, but I am beginning to think that the hours  have spent on this will justify crossing my fingers and hoping that backup doesn't fail at an unfortunate time.