Test mail works <> Mail notifications don't work

Dear all,

I have to support a Nextcloud environment which was implemented and maintained (so far) by someone else. Moreover I’m nearly completely new to Nextcloud… .

Our setup:
Nextcloud 21.0.4 (running on CentOS 7 (64-bit))
PHP 7.3.20

Config.php:

<?php
$CONFIG = array (
  'instanceid' => '***********',
  'passwordsalt' => '***********',
  'secret' => '***********',
  'has_internet_connection' => false,
  'simpleSignUpLink.shown' => false,
  'trusted_domains' =>
  array (
    0 => 'DNSname',
    1 => 'Hostname',
    2 => 'IP',
  ),
  'skeletondirectory' => '/NextData/data/skeleton',
  'share_folder' => '/Shares',
  'auth.bruteforce.protection.enabled' => false,
  'debug' => false,
  'datadirectory' => '/NextData/data',
  'dbtype' => 'mysql',
  'version' => '21.0.4.1',
  'overwrite.cli.url' => 'http://DNSname',
  'overwriteprotocol' => 'https',
  'dbname' => 'nextcloud',
  'dbhost' => 'localhost',
  'dbport' => '',
  'dbtableprefix' => 'oc_',
  'dbuser' => '***********',
  'dbpassword' => '***********',
  'installed' => true,
  'memcache.distributed' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
  'memcache.locking' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
  'memcache.local' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\APCu',
  'redis' =>
  array (
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'port' => ***********,
  ),
  'ldapIgnoreNamingRules' => false,
  'ldapProviderFactory' => 'OCA\\User_LDAP\\LDAPProviderFactory',
  'mail_smtpmode' => 'smtp',
  'mail_sendmailmode' => 'smtp',
  'theme' => '',
  'loglevel' => 2,
  'maintenance' => false,
  'mysql.utf8mb4' => true,
  'twofactor_enforced' => 'true',
  'twofactor_enforced_groups' =>
  array (
    0 => 'admin',
  ),
  'twofactor_enforced_excluded_groups' =>
  array (
  ),
  'mail_from_address' => '***********',
  'mail_domain' => '***********',
  'mail_smtphost' => 'our mail relay',
  'mail_smtpport' => '25',
  'updater.release.channel' => 'stable',
  'default_phone_region' => 'DE',
);

Issue:
The test mail, which can be triggered in “Administration > Basic settings > Email server”, works flawlessly! I receive the test message immediately. However notification mails (if someone uploads a file or changes a file) aren’t sent. On our mail relay I only see the triggered test mails but no notification mails at all. So it looks like that these notification mails aren’t triggered.
Maybe some kind of mechanism, which checks for changes (and therefore triggers notification mails) doesn’t work?

Circumstances:
At some point of time the notification mails stopped working. As I wasn’t responsible for the system back then, I cannot say if something was changed. The only thing I know: this issue exists for at least 3 months. I saw that there was a fix for notifications in 21.0.4. Therefore we upgraded our Nextcloud server from 21.0.2 to 21.0.4. Unfortunately it didn’t get fixed.

Does anybody know what/where to check?
Is there any specific log regarding “notifications” which we can analyze for errors?

Thank you very much!

Do you have the server set up to run the cronjob?
Look in Settings --> Administration --> Basic settings --> Background jobs to see if the job ran recently and make sure that you have it set to cron, and in the admin manual, you can see that it recommends a line in the apache user’s (not root or some other user!!!) crontab to the effect of */5 * * * * php -f /path/to/ncroot/cron.php

Hello Larry,

Thank you for your answer. Yes, we are using “Cron” as background job:
image

Here is some more info:
image

Has anyone else any idea?

I observed the same issue which is described here:

We also fixed it on database level. Although the checkbox stays “enabled” now, there are no notification emails :frowning:

image

Same issue here, the notification used to work reliably when set up initially about 4 months ago and I was quite happy with it. I used it for newsletter notifications.
But with the last two versions it doesn’t work anymore. Looks like it does not make sense to wait for yet another firmware update.
Does anyone know where to offload this bug, so that development will get to know about it?

We have to offload it at Github:

O.k. I will try.
By the way, the test mail is sent as well as the daily report mail, so I am sure that the email settings are alright. Just the favorites notification isn’t sending any mails.
And my sys admin has assured me that the cron job is executed cyclically.

Stupid question: do you have all email notifications actives into “activity”?

There is no such thing as a stupid question, there are only stupid answers!

I have selected email notification under “Settings/Activities/Notifications” at

  • “A file or folder has changed”
  • “A file has been added or removed from your favorites”

I also have selected “Send daily activity summary in the morning”, which works; I do receive this daily mail correctly. Also, I receive the test mail which I can initiate under “Basic Settings”.

I have the same issue since I updated to Nextcloud 21 on my Univention server.
Even the yesterday’s update to 21.0.7 did not solve the problem.

In most cases the solution:

So:
share a file by public link, logout and download the shared file by that link. If notification mail on download of shared files is activated, you should receive a notification mail depending on the interval as set in “Activity”.

I’m sorry, but both “solutions” (downgrading to v19 or sharing files by public link) are no solutions. Maybe you can use the last mentioned “solution” (sharing files by public link) in rare circumstances… but downgrading to an unsupported version with security issues is no option at all.

For all who might come across this post: right now, it seems to be a man-made bug which was introduced with this Github change: merge file activity settings into a single 'favorite changed' item by icewind1991 · Pull Request #22205 · nextcloud/server · GitHub

Don’t ask me why :expressionless:

Some more links which might help in future (in case someone will post any useful response):
https://github.com/nextcloud/activity/issues/655

1 Like

Hi all
If you’re working with groups there seems to be a big flaw since Nextcloud version 22!! With version 21 activity notifications used to work uncomplainingly, but with version 22 the problems began. All of sudden email and push activity notifications didn’t come through anymore. With version 23 it is all the same.
Yesterday I started to analyze the situation and I came to an most surprising result: The culprit for the missing notifications of groups are spaces in their names!! If you create a new group without spaces in the name all is working perfect. :smile:
I didn’t go down to the code, but you can see in “oc_activity” that the spaces in the groupname are translated to plus signs ("+") and this way the group cannot be found.

It seems to be in the same range as the problem with usernames.

In any case I’m happy that activity is notificated again!!

Hi excriban,

What exactly do you mean with “groups” in this context? Can you share a screenshot for me for better understanding? Thanks a lot.

Sorry, if my contribution is somewhat unclear.

It’s very easy: Using spaces in user names led to problems and is blocked. It seems the same applies to group names. But unfortunately there is no block or reminder when creating groups. Starting with Nextcloud 19 I arranged all users (and rights) in groups and I named them with one or more spaces! As a result all activity notifications for users of all the groups didn’t trigger anymore for Nextcloud Version 22 and higher.

Creating new groups with no spaces in the group name brought back the functionality. I think Nextcloud should block (apparently) forbidden special characters when naming groups, like it is done with user names.

P.S. Could not upload a screenshot! I always produced a crash. (???)

@escriban: Probably your contribution is not unclear but it’s my lack of experience and knowledge of Nextcloud :smiling_face:

Well, I checked the sections which you meant probably:

Users > Everyone: our usernames never contained any spaces
Users > Groups: our Group names never contained any spaces (we use a hyphen and/or underscore instead of spaces)
Settings > Group folders: our Group folders never contained any spaces (we use a hyphen and/or underscore instead of spaces)

So it looks like you found another bug, which produces the same effect: no notification e-mails when files/folders get modified by one of the users. Unfortunately, we don’t have any solution/workaround like you do :wink:

Can you tell me which app version of “Notifications” you are using? We have 2.9.0.

@NextClaus

That’s exactly what I did: I moved all users of a group named with spaces to a new one where I replaced the spaces with underscores.

I upgraded from Nextcloud 22.2.5 to 23.0.4 in the hope this would resolve the notification problem. This step updated the notifications app to 2.11.1. But just as before notification did not work! So I changed the group names as mentioned above and - voilá - notifications worked again.

Not an option for us, as there are no space characters :frowning:

Regarding the Notifications app: do you know if these apps get only updated when doing general Nextcloud upgrades? Or is it possible/recommended to update these apps (sub-components) manually?

The apps can be updated manually, if you have admin permissions. Click on your icon in the upper right corner of your Nexcloud browser application and select “Apps”. You will get a list of all apps with recommended updates then.