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@title Configuring Inbound Email
@group config
This document contains instructions for configuring inbound email, so users
may interact with some Phabricator applications via email.
= Preamble =
This can be extremely difficult to configure correctly. This is doubly true if
you use a local MTA.
There are a few approaches available:
| Receive Mail With | Setup | Cost | Notes |
|--------|-------|------|-------|
| Mailgun | Easy | Cheap | Recommended |
| SendGrid | Easy | Cheap | |
| Local MTA | Extremely Difficult | Free | Strongly discouraged! |
The remainder of this document walks through configuring Phabricator to
receive mail, and then configuring your chosen transport to deliver mail
to Phabricator.
= Configuring Phabricator =
By default, Phabricator uses a `noreply@phabricator.example.com` email address
as the 'From' (configurable with `metamta.default-address`) and sets
'Reply-To' to the user generating the email (e.g., by making a comment), if the
mail was generated by a user action. This means that users can reply (or
reply-all) to email to discuss changes, but the conversation won't be recorded
in Phabricator and users will not be able to take actions like claiming tasks or
requesting changes to revisions.
To change this behavior so that users can interact with objects in Phabricator
over email, change the configuration key `metamta.reply-handler-domain` to some
domain you configure according to the instructions below, e.g.
`phabricator.example.com`. Once you set this key, emails will use a
'Reply-To' like `T123+273+af310f9220ad@phabricator.example.com`, which -- when
configured correctly, according to the instructions below -- will parse incoming
email and allow users to interact with Differential revisions, Maniphest tasks,
etc. over email.
If you don't want Phabricator to take up an entire domain (or subdomain) you
can configure a general prefix so you can use a single mailbox to receive mail
on. To make use of this set `metamta.single-reply-handler-prefix` to the
prefix of your choice, and Phabricator will prepend this to the 'Reply-To'
mail address. This works because everything up to the first (optional) '+'
character in an email-address is considered the receiver, and everything
after is essentially ignored.
You can also set up application email addresses to allow users to create
application objects via email. For example, you could configure
`bugs@phabricator.example.com` to create a Maniphest task out of any email
which is sent to it. To do this, see application settings for a given
application at
{nav icon=home, name=Home >
name=Applications >
icon=cog, name=Settings}
= Security =
The email reply channel is "somewhat" authenticated. Each reply-to address is
unique to the recipient and includes a hash of user information and a unique
object ID, so it can only be used to update that object and only be used to act
on behalf of the recipient.
However, if an address is leaked (which is fairly easy -- for instance,
forwarding an email will leak a live reply address, or a user might take a
screenshot), //anyone// who can send mail to your reply-to domain may interact
with the object the email relates to as the user who leaked the mail. Because
the authentication around email has this weakness, some actions (like accepting
revisions) are not permitted over email.
This implementation is an attempt to balance utility and security, but makes
some sacrifices on both sides to achieve it because of the difficulty of
authenticating senders in the general case (e.g., where you are an open source
project and need to interact with users whose email accounts you have no control
over).
If you leak a bunch of reply-to addresses by accident, you can change
`phabricator.mail-key` in your configuration to invalidate all the old hashes.
You can also set `metamta.public-replies`, which will change how Phabricator
delivers email. Instead of sending each recipient a unique mail with a personal
reply-to address, it will send a single email to everyone with a public reply-to
address. This decreases security because anyone who can spoof a "From" address
can act as another user, but increases convenience if you use mailing lists and,
practically, is a reasonable setting for many installs. The reply-to address
will still contain a hash unique to the object it represents, so users who have
not received an email about an object can not blindly interact with it.
If you enable application email addresses, those addresses also use the weaker
"From" authentication mechanism.
NOTE: Phabricator does not currently attempt to verify "From" addresses because
this is technically complex, seems unreasonably difficult in the general case,
and no installs have had a need for it yet. If you have a specific case where a
reasonable mechanism exists to provide sender verification (e.g., DKIM
signatures are sufficient to authenticate the sender under your configuration,
or you are willing to require all users to sign their email), file a feature
request.
= Testing and Debugging Inbound Email =
You can use the `bin/mail` utility to test and review inbound mail. This can
help you determine if mail is being delivered to Phabricator or not:
phabricator/ $ ./bin/mail list-inbound # List inbound messages.
phabricator/ $ ./bin/mail show-inbound # Show details about a message.
You can also test receiving mail, but note that this just simulates receiving
the mail and doesn't send any information over the network. It is
primarily aimed at developing email handlers: it will still work properly
if your inbound email configuration is incorrect or even disabled.
phabricator/ $ ./bin/mail receive-test # Receive test message.
Run `bin/mail help <command>` for detailed help on using these commands.
= Mailgun Setup =
To use Mailgun, you need a Mailgun account. You can sign up at
<http://www.mailgun.com>. Provided you have such an account, configure it
like this:
- Configure a mail domain according to Mailgun's instructions.
- Add a Mailgun route with a `catch_all()` rule which takes the action
`forward("https://phabricator.example.com/mail/mailgun/")`. Replace the
example domain with your actual domain.
- Set the `mailgun.api-key` config key to your Mailgun API key.
= SendGrid Setup =
To use SendGrid, you need a SendGrid account with access to the "Parse API" for
inbound email. Provided you have such an account, configure it like this:
- Configure an MX record according to SendGrid's instructions, i.e. add
`phabricator.example.com MX 10 mx.sendgrid.net.` or similar.
- Go to the "Parse Incoming Emails" page on SendGrid
(<http://sendgrid.com/developer/reply>) and add the domain as the
"Hostname".
- Add the URL `https://phabricator.example.com/mail/sendgrid/` as the "Url",
using your domain (and HTTP instead of HTTPS if you are not configured with
SSL).
- If you get an error that the hostname "can't be located or verified", it
means your MX record is either incorrectly configured or hasn't propagated
yet.
- Set `metamta.reply-handler-domain` to `phabricator.example.com`"
(whatever you configured the MX record for).
That's it! If everything is working properly you should be able to send email
to `anything@phabricator.example.com` and it should appear in
`bin/mail list-inbound` within a few seconds.
= Local MTA: Installing Mailparse =
If you're going to run your own MTA, you need to install the PECL mailparse
extension. In theory, you can do that with:
$ sudo pecl install mailparse
You may run into an error like "needs mbstring". If so, try:
$ sudo yum install php-mbstring # or equivalent
$ sudo pecl install -n mailparse
If you get a linker error like this:
COUNTEREXAMPLE
PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library
'/usr/lib64/php/modules/mailparse.so' - /usr/lib64/php/modules/mailparse.so:
undefined symbol: mbfl_name2no_encoding in Unknown on line 0
...you need to edit your php.ini file so that mbstring.so is loaded **before**
mailparse.so. This is not the default if you have individual files in
`php.d/`.
= Local MTA: Configuring Sendmail =
Before you can configure Sendmail, you need to install Mailparse. See the
section "Installing Mailparse" above.
Sendmail is very difficult to configure. First, you need to configure it for
your domain so that mail can be delivered correctly. In broad strokes, this
probably means something like this:
- add an MX record;
- make sendmail listen on external interfaces;
- open up port 25 if necessary (e.g., in your EC2 security policy);
- add your host to /etc/mail/local-host-names; and
- restart sendmail.
Now, you can actually configure sendmail to deliver to Phabricator. In
`/etc/aliases`, add an entry like this:
phabricator: "| /path/to/phabricator/scripts/mail/mail_handler.php"
If you use the `PHABRICATOR_ENV` environmental variable to select a
configuration, you can pass the value to the script as an argument:
.../path/to/mail_handler.php <ENV>
This is an advanced feature which is rarely used. Most installs should run
without an argument.
After making this change, run `sudo newaliases`. Now you likely need to symlink
this script into `/etc/smrsh/`:
sudo ln -s /path/to/phabricator/scripts/mail/mail_handler.php /etc/smrsh/
Finally, edit `/etc/mail/virtusertable` and add an entry like this:
@yourdomain.com phabricator@localhost
That will forward all mail to @yourdomain.com to the Phabricator processing
script. Run `sudo /etc/mail/make` or similar and then restart sendmail with
`sudo /etc/init.d/sendmail restart`.

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