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Eugene Beetge - Thu, 2015/01/08 - 17:46
Hi guys,
I have a fairly new installation of Canvas LMS with you. Where can I get info on setting up the outbound email.
Thanks
Eugene
Forum:
Hi guys,
I have a fairly new installation of Canvas LMS with you. Where can I get info on setting up the outbound email.
Thanks
Eugene
Unless it is blocked somewhere should work OOTB
TBH I haven't confirmed that emailing on the Canvas appliance does work OOTB but it should (all the other TKL appliances work OOTB). It should have postfix configured to send email out via port 25. Having said that many ISPs block port 25 by default (as often malware use it to robo-spam). Is that a possibility? If not then perhaps provide a bit more info about where your appliance is running and how it connects to the net.
Hi Jeremy, I installed on
Hi Jeremy,
I installed on Amazon EC2 with a AWS micro account to test. all went through smoothly and the instance at Amazon is available etc.
Unfortunatelly I am not to proficient in Linux or mail servers but know enough to follow instructions. The emailing is important to the solution as eny changes to a user acocunt is confirmed via email.
If you can offer any assistance I would be super happy. I am not sure how involved you get in support of this type as I am sure you have tons to respond to.
Thanks
Eugene
Eugene Beetge
eugeneb@disalox.co.za
Do you intend to run it on AWS?
If so then proceed, if not then I probably wouldn't worry too much yet. Wait until you have it running on the platform you intend to use and go from there...
Amazon servers can be a little problematic with regards to sending emails. Because they are so cheap and easy to set up, spammers have been known to abuse AWS... This leads to many AWS IPs being blacklisted and/or auto-filtered.
So ultimately I suggest a 2 pronged approach:
Firstly do some troubleshooting on your appliance. Make sure that you are sending to a known account (e.g. your own gmail account or similar). According to the Canvas appliance page it has Postfix MTA (mail transfer agent; i.e. Postfix is the name of the software) installed and configured. TBH I'm 99% sure that that would be working OOTB. But just in case perhaps do some basic troubleshooting. Google will help out there: here is a link that looks promising, and here is another...
Secondly (and probably more importantly) you'll need to take a few steps to avoid being blacklisted and/or get yourself un-blacklisted. An elastic IP (which is essentially a static IP that you attach to your AWS server) is a great place to start. A community member Chris Musty did a great post on setting this up which you'll find here.
Finally, on a more general note; the TurnKey docs can be worth a quick browse (so you have an idea of whats there) but ultimately google will have tons of resources for you! Even if you aren't that familiar with Linux, there is so much info out there that it is uncommon not to find something useful IMO. Keep in mind that TurnKey is based on Debian (TKL v13.x is based on Debian Wheezy) and you can't go too far wrong. Often info for Ubuntu applies too (although be a little careful as sometimes it's different). Some things that apply to other Linux OS (such as RHEL or CentOS) will apply too, but some not so much... It takes a little while to get your head around what you can copy/paste and what you need to adjust, but my advice is to have a disposable VM or 2 setup (in VirtualBox or similar) and test stuff out. So long as you keep some notes, even if you destroy it you can start again and get back to where you were pretty quick... My advice is to start really specific and get more general depending on the success of your searching...
Good luck and don't be scared to ask if you get stuck - so long as you don't hold your breath waiting for an answer! :) Also if you find anything interesting or that you think might be of value, please do not hesitate to post it here on the forums, or in the docs (they're a wiki).
Thanks
Hi Jeremy,
thanks for the advice. I setup (on my own) a Ubuntu machine and went through the tedious manual installation of Canvas. What a learning curve to get use to Linux environments. Most of it is still completelly above me but I am making my way through it. Getting to understand the whole concept.
i will definatelly take your advice on the AWS instance and play with the elastic IP. i see they have lots of documentation also.
Will definatelly start learning.
Cheers
Eugene
Eugene Beetge
eugeneb@disalox.co.za
Ah ok...
I thought that you were using the TurnKey Canvas appliance hence my reference to email being already set up... I didn't realise that you set it up yourself. In that case I have no idea how to set up the email (I didn't build the appliance and don't know much about Canvas at all...).
So if you are using vanilla Canvas that you installed yourself and want to configure email, then I would imagine that it should be documented somewhere. AFAIK Instructables (the ppl who make Canvas) have documentation and forums. There would probably be the best place to ask Canvas setup and config questions.
FWIW the source build code for our appliance is here on GitHub although that is probably not going to be that helpful for you (but who knows...)
Good luck! :)
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