Email settings for NextCloudPi

If you want to receive emails for password recovery and notifications, you have to set up the email settings in Nextcloud.

Email settings for Nextcloud are located in Admin → Basic Settings → Email server. There are 2 recommended ways to set the email address that mails come from:

  1. PHP (postfix)
  2. SMTP

PHP is the most simple and easier to configure.

The differences between them are that in PHP mode, sent emails pass through the ncp mail server named postfix, as opposed in SMTP mode where the email get passed through your email provider(Gmail, Yahoo, etc). With SMTP emails are saved in Sent folder of your account.

For SMTP it is required that you have a registered account with your provider, and to know the details such as port, authentication method and credentials.

PHP (postfix)

In Email server area of Additional settings select PHP as the Send mode and simply add the email of which you want to shown as the sender of the receiving emails.

SMTP

This is the example setup for Gmail. For other services, the configuration may vary.

In Email server area of Additional settings add the following:

  1. Sent mode SMTP, Encryption STARTTLS
  2. From address your_email@your_provider
  3. Authentication method Login, Authentication required Checked
  4. Server address your_provider_smtp_address, : your_provider_port
  5. Credentials: email_address, email_password
  6. Click Store Credentials

You can now click Send email to test your settings. the administrator user will receive a test email.

SSMTP

(depreciated and no longer supported by or available in Debian Buster repo)

There is a third way to set up your email, if the first two did not get the job done.

For this to work you need to install and configure ssmtp and bsd-mailx, which also installs the required libraries. It will also remove Postfix if it is installed.

sudo apt-get install ssmtp bsd-mailx

File created manually:
/root/.forward

used nano to add;

pi@localhost

sudo nano /root/.forward

Files edited:

/etc/ssmtp/revaliases

sudo nano /etc/ssmtp/revaliases

used nano to add:

root:my@mxroute.com:smtp.mxroute.com:587

and
/etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

sudo nano /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

mine looks like this:

Config file for sSMTP sendmail

The person who gets all mail for userids < 1000

Make this empty to disable rewriting.

root=my@mxroute.com

The place where the mail goes. The actual machine name is required no

MX records are consulted. Commonly mailhosts are named mail.domain.com

mailhub:587=smtp.mxroute.com

AuthUser=my@mxroute.com

AuthPass=**********

UseTLS=Yes

UseSTARTTLS=Yes

Where will the mail seem to come from?

rewriteDomain=my.tld

The full hostname

hostname=myhostname

Are users allowed to set their own From: address?

YES - Allow the user to specify their own From: address

NO - Use the system generated From: address

FromLineOverride=YES

To protect your account info:

sudo chgrp pi /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

sudo chmod 640 /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf