By default, this playbook sets up an Exim email server through which all Matrix services send emails.
The email server would attempt to deliver emails directly to their final destination. This may or may not work, depending on your domain configuration (SPF settings, etc.)
By default, emails are sent from matrix@<your-domain-name>
(as specified by the matrix_mailer_sender_address
playbook variable).
Note: If you are using a Google Cloud instance, port 25 is always blocked, so you need to relay email through another SMTP server as described below.
No matter whether you send email directly (the default) or you relay email through another host (see how below), you'll probably need to allow outgoing traffic for TCP ports 25/587 (depending on configuration).
If you'd like to relay email through another SMTP server, feel free to redefine a few playbook variables. Example:
matrix_mailer_sender_address: "another.sender@example.com"
matrix_mailer_relay_use: true
matrix_mailer_relay_host_name: "mail.example.com"
matrix_mailer_relay_host_port: 587
matrix_mailer_relay_auth: true
matrix_mailer_relay_auth_username: "another.sender@example.com"
matrix_mailer_relay_auth_password: "some-password"
Note: only the secure submission protocol (using STARTTLS
, usually on port 587
) is supported. SMTPS (encrypted SMTP, usually on port 465
) is not supported.
An easy and free SMTP service to set up is Sendgrid, the free tier allows for up to 100 emails per day to be sent. In the settings below you can provide any email for matrix_mailer_sender_address
.
The only other thing you need to change is the matrix_mailer_relay_auth_password
, which you can generate at https://app.sendgrid.com/settings/api_keys. The API key password looks something like SG.955oW1mLSfwds7i9Yd6IA5Q.q8GTaB8q9kGDzasegdG6u95fQ-6zkdwrPP8bOeuI
.
Note that the matrix_mailer_relay_auth_username
is literally the string apikey
, it's always the same for Sendgrid.
matrix_mailer_sender_address: "arbitrary@email.com"
matrix_mailer_relay_use: true
matrix_mailer_relay_host_name: "smtp.sendgrid.net"
matrix_mailer_relay_host_port: 587
matrix_mailer_relay_auth: true
matrix_mailer_relay_auth_username: "apikey"
matrix_mailer_relay_auth_password: "<your api key password>"
If you're having trouble with email not being delivered, it may be useful to inspect the mailer logs: journalctl -f -u matrix-mailer
.