How To Configure Email Settings in Nagios XI
Purpose
This following describes how Nagios XI sends emails and explains how to configure your email
settings. Nagios XI uses email to send notifications as well as for sending reports.
Navigation
Email settings in Nagios XI are located in Admin > System Config > Manage Email Settings.
Send Mail From
Under the General Mail Settings section, the Send Mail From field is how you define where the email
was sent from. The format is:
Plain Text Name <alias@your.email.domain>
The < > brackets are required. If this is not correctly formatted then the email will be sent; however, in
some circumstances the mail sending program may default to the system default and it may come
from something like:
Root User <root@localhost>
If the receiver of the email clicks the reply button in their email client, then this is the email address
that will be replied to. If you want the ability for people to reply to emails, then you need to make sure
this is a valid email address.
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How To Configure Email Settings in Nagios XI
Methods
Nagios XI provides two methods for sending emails:
• Sendmail / Postfix
• SMTP
Sendmail / Postfix
This mail method uses Postfix to send email. It is referred to in the interface as Sendmail
because this is historically the most common mail sending method. In the operating system the
sendmail command is actually the sendmail.postfix command that provides the ability for Postfix
to accept Sendmail commands.
Technical aspects aside, when using the Sendmail method the Nagios XI server is responsible
for sending emails directly to all the recipients. It contacts the email server for the email
recipient and sends the message via SMTP port 25. This means the message is sent using
plain text – the contents of the email can be easily viewed by network sniffing programs.
Issues can arise when you send emails to recipients that have spam/virus detection software.
The receiving mail server can detect that the email it received is not really from the mail server
that is the owner of that domain and it can discard it or move it to a junk mail folder. That
behavior is obviously not desired as you want to make sure notifications are received.
Choosing Sendmail as your method on the Manage Email Settings page requires no
additional settings to be defined.
SMTP
Using SMTP as the method for sending email allows you to configure Nagios XI to use an
email server for mail delivery. This could be:
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How To Configure Email Settings in Nagios XI
• An internal email server in your organization like
• Microsoft Exchange
• Postfix
• An external email server like:
• Hosted email services
• Internet Service Provider
Using an SMTP server for mail delivery is generally a more secure method of sending emails. It
also means that your Nagios XI server can focus on doing monitoring and not waste
computing cycles being an email server.
The settings applicable to for SMTP are as follows:
• The Host field is the network address of the SMTP server. An IP address or DNS record
can be used.
• The Port field is the network port the SMTP server is listening on. Common ports are 25
and 587.
• The Username and Password fields are optional, this all depends on how your email
server is configured. This may be required to allow mail relaying, which is explained in
the Mail Relay section of this document.
• Security is optional. Choosing TLS or SSL will encrypt the communication of the email,
preventing the contents of the email from being viewed by network sniffing programs.
TLS is recommended as SSL is now deprecated due to security vulnerabilities (SSL is
still supported and valid). Your mail server needs to support TLS or SSL for this method
to be used.
SMTP Debug Logging
The following KB article provides steps on how to perform debug logging for troubleshooting SMTP
issues:
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How To Configure Email Settings in Nagios XI
PHPMailer - Troubleshooting Using Debug Logging
Mail Relay
Mail relay is when you request the SMTP server to send emails to an email domain that it is not
responsible for. For example:
• The email address you are sending from is nagios_alerts@mycompany.com
• Your SMTP server is responsible for the mycompany.com domain.
• One of your Nagios XI users has an email address of jd@anothercompany.com
• When Nagios XI uses the SMTP server to send the email to jd@anothercompany.com it
could be rejected because it needs to send this on to another email server. This email
server might be configured to prevent mail relay.
Your email servers may be configured to deny mail relay. This is to prevent a rogue computer from
using that SMTP server to send spam email, which could result in your email server being blacklisted
on the internet.
You normally only come across these problems when you don't provide a username and password in
your SMTP settings. Most SMTP servers will allow you to send emails to other domains when using
authentication credentials. Please refer to your mail server documentation on how to allow mail relay.
More Information
See more information about configuring email and text notifications.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/Lqo7MyM3G-c
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