SMTP server with no username and password

[ItaloBorrelli]

I see that there is a flag for activating the email system requiring a username and password to be explicitly defined. My SMTP server is hidden within my network and doesn't require a username and password. Could we implement a feature to activate the email system without a username or password? It appears that it fails anyways if I provide login credentials.

Could it be as simple as creating a new flag in setup.xml that would activate the email server? Or perhaps the requirements are over-strict and we could simply change the emailIsActive boolean in EDStatic to be less strict?

Could open up an issue and a PR if guidance is provided.

[ItaloBorrelli]

Hm, while using tcpdump I observed the calls being made from the docker host to the smtp server. Although I had setup ERDDAP_emailSmtpPort: 25 it kept sending on port 465. I tried another port and yet erddap kept trying to send to port 465, which is not where my email relay is listening.

This was resolved and fixed once I set ERDDAP_emailProperties: mail.smtp.starttls.enable|true. After that it started using whatever port I set, and finally managed to use my relay, despite the invalid user name and password.

So I think there is two things:

1. The documentation could be a little clearer about whether the port will actually be used, and
2. My initial suggestion could be implemented so that user name and password are not required.

Lastly, mentioning for posterity, it appears that emailEverythingTo doesn't work as expected. The email set there doesn't receive anything. I did observe instead that adminEmail received emails regarding daily reports and errors. Perhaps the emailEverythingTo property is outdated and has been replaced by adminEmail? I'm going to test and provide as much of the email logs as I can (though not everything of course for privacy).

[ItaloBorrelli]

Nevermind the last part re which email is receiving what. I see now that everything is receiving all the expected emails.

[ChrisJohnNOAA]

We do not currently support smtp without username/password. If we were going to support it I would want to make sure users have explicitly opted in to it and that the ERDDAP teams considers it best practice to password protect smtp servers.

We could potentially add a feature flag that handles this. The drawbacks to this are supporting another code path and an additional setting.

[rmendels]

@ItaloBorrelli Glad you got it worked out. We will make note about your comments on the documentation

[ItaloBorrelli]

Sounds great! Thanks for the follow up! Is it purposeful then that it wouldn't use the specified SMTP port and instead uses 465 when TLS isn't enabled?