FastBack Email Alerting < SMTP sender info

[mccleld]

Hi Team,

Wondering if anyone came across this yet with the TSM FastBack in-built email alert feature.

Whilst I can modify the email recipients list and the target SMTP server through the FastBack Manager GUI, I don't see where/if I can modify any further settings. This is important as many SMTP servers are configured to require a valid sender email address in order to route mails. However FastBack appears simply to default the sender field to the name of the FastBack Server resulting in dropped emails:

Sep 14 10:48:16 xxxx-xxxxx sendmail-fast[23549]: [ID 801593 mail.notice] o8E9mGNi023549: ruleset=check_mail, arg1=<MY_FASTBACK>, relay=[172.19.192.244], reject=553 5.5.4 <MY_FASTBACK>... Domain name required for sender address MY_FASTBACK

I've had a snoop around but I can't seem to find anything which lets me modify this behaviour.

Anybody else? Or should I submit this to IBM as an enhancement request for a future version?
__________
David Mc
London, UK

 

[tyoung13]

Hey David, not sure if you have seen the "ExternalNotification.bat" file in the installation directory's "utilities" subdir, but there's a bunch of configurable options in there.

HTH

 

[mccleld]

I see you, but I think these scripts are different to the periodic notification that FastBack (I think it's actually FastBack Watchdog) sends out on a scheduled/daily basis and that are configured from the GUI - I can't be too clear from what the documentation is telling me here, but from what I'm understanding this is separate to the synchronous mail notifications that get generated as and when when an alert condition occurs. (cf. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infoc.../FB_InstallUse/t_fast_alerts_configemail.html) Any critical alert emails that would otherwise be sent as issues occur are written to the Windows Application Event Log and the customer in turn scrapes these and forwards them up to Netcool/Tivoli.

/DMc

 

[mccleld]

An update for the record - I've been through this with IBM L2 and development and, whilst we can modify the SMTP Sender Address for an automated email (by manually editing the FastBack Server's orabr_conf.txt file), we're unable to fill out the SMTP Reply To Address field for any generated emails. Unfortunately, this means that automated emails won't be relayed by some SMTP Servers (i.e., those which, due to anti-spam/threats measures, are configured to reject any emails without an sender address or a reply to address). I've raised this as a DCR (design/deficiency change request) with IBM to try and add this feature and to get it integrated into the FastBack Manager GUI - I'll update when I hear more.

__________
David Mc
London, UK

 

[ober67]

Hi Mccleid,

What about username and password for smtp server, can that also be supplied in the orabr_conf.txt file, I did not see a space for it ?

Also after making any changes to that file don't you need to run a small utility to update the .sig file?

And please excuse my ignorance but what is the purpose of these sig files, i am used to simple TSM text files and for config and that's it (like dsm.opt).

Thanks

 

[mccleld]

Hey Ober67 - the sig file thing is a little confusing to me too, as I've happily made updates to the orabr_conf.txt which have taken effect without requiring an update to the .sig file. As for the username and password for the SMTP server, I don't recall seeing entries for those in there either - the email integration in FastBack does smack a bit of a half-baked developer-led bolt-on implementation that hasn't been fully thought-through and realised, but hopefully IBM will be able to raise the bar on this.
__________
David Mc
London, UK