NAME¶
rt-mailgate - Mail gateway for Request Tracker
SYNOPSIS¶
rt-mailgate --help : this text
Usual invocation (from MTA):
rt-mailgate --action (correspond|comment|...) --queue queuename
--url http://your.rt.server/
[ --debug ]
[ --extension (queue|action|ticket) ]
[ --timeout seconds ]
OPTIONS¶
- "--action"
- Specifies what happens to email sent to this alias. The
avaliable basic actions are: "correspond", "comment".
If you've set the RT configuration variable
"UnsafeEmailCommands" , "take"
and "resolve" are also available. You can execute two or more
actions on a single message using a "-" separated list. RT will
execute the actions in the listed order. For example you can use
"take-comment", "correspond-resolve" or
"take-comment-resolve" as actions.
Note that "take" and "resolve" actions ignore message
text if used alone. Include a "comment" or
"correspond" action if you want RT to record the incoming
message.
The default action is "correspond".
- "--queue"
- This flag determines which queue this alias should create a
ticket in if no ticket identifier is found.
- "--url"
- This flag tells the mail gateway where it can find your RT
server. You should probably use the same URL that users use to log into
RT.
If your RT server uses SSL, you will need to install additional Perl
libraries. RT will detect and install these dependencies if you pass the
"--enable-ssl-mailgate" flag to configure as documented in RT's
README.
If you have a self-signed SSL certificate, you may also need to pass
"--ca-file" or "--no-verify-ssl", below.
- "--ca-file" path
- Specifies the path to the public SSL certificate for the
certificate authority that should be used to verify the website's SSL
certificate. If your webserver uses a self-signed certificate, you should
preferentially use this option over "--no-verify-ssl", as it
will ensure that the self-signed certificate that the mailgate is seeing
the right self-signed certificate.
- "--no-verify-ssl"
- This flag tells the mail gateway to trust all SSL
certificates, regardless of if their hostname matches the certificate, and
regardless of CA. This is required if you have a self-signed certificate,
or some other certificate which is not traceable back to an certificate
your system ultimitely trusts.
Verifying SSL certificates requires LWP::UserAgent version 6.0 or higher;
explicitly passing "--verify-ssl" on prior versions will
error.
- "--extension" OPTIONAL
- Some MTAs will route mail sent to user-foo@host or
user+foo@host to user@host and present "foo" in the environment
variable $EXTENSION. By specifying the value "queue" for this
parameter, the queue this message should be submitted to will be set to
the value of $EXTENSION. By specifying "ticket", $EXTENSION will
be interpreted as the id of the ticket this message is related to.
"action" will allow the user to specify either
"comment" or "correspond" in the address
extension.
- "--debug" OPTIONAL
- Print debugging output to standard error
- "--timeout" OPTIONAL
- Configure the timeout for posting the message to the web
server. The default timeout is 3 minutes (180 seconds).
DESCRIPTION¶
The RT mail gateway is the primary mechanism for communicating with RT via
email. This program simply directs the email to the RT web server, which
handles filing correspondence and sending out any required mail. It is
designed to be run as part of the mail delivery process, either called
directly by the MTA or "procmail", or in a
.forward or
equivalent.
SETUP¶
Much of the set up of the mail gateway depends on your MTA and mail routing
configuration. However, you will need first of all to create an RT user for
the mail gateway and assign it a password; this helps to ensure that mail
coming into the web server did originate from the gateway.
Next, you need to route mail to "rt-mailgate" for the queues you're
monitoring. For instance, if you're using
/etc/aliases and you have a
"bugs" queue, you will want something like this:
bugs: "|/opt/rt4/bin/rt-mailgate --queue bugs --action correspond
--url http://rt.mycorp.com/"
bugs-comment: "|/opt/rt4/bin/rt-mailgate --queue bugs --action comment
--url http://rt.mycorp.com/"
Note that you don't have to run your RT server on your mail server, as the mail
gateway will happily relay to a different machine.
CUSTOMIZATION¶
By default, the mail gateway will accept mail from anyone. However, there are
situations in which you will want to authenticate users before allowing them
to communicate with the system. You can do this via a plug-in mechanism in the
RT configuration.
You can set the array @MailPlugins to be a list of plugins. The default plugin,
if this is not given, is "Auth::MailFrom" - that is, authentication
of the person is done based on the "From" header of the email. If
you have additional filters or authentication mechanisms, you can list them
here and they will be called in order:
Set( @MailPlugins =>
"Filter::SpamAssassin",
"Auth::LDAP",
# ...
);
See the documentation for any additional plugins you have.
You may also put Perl subroutines into the @MailPlugins array, if they behave as
described below.
WRITING PLUGINS¶
What's actually going on in the above is that @MailPlugins is a list of Perl
modules; RT prepends "RT::Interface::Email::" to the name, to form a
package name, and then "use"'s this module. The module is expected
to provide a "GetCurrentUser" subroutine, which takes a hash of
several parameters:
- Message
- A "MIME::Entity" object representing the
email
- CurrentUser
- An "RT::CurrentUser" object
- AuthStat
- The authentication level returned from the previous
plugin.
- Ticket [OPTIONAL]
- The ticket under discussion
- Queue [OPTIONAL]
- If we don't already have a ticket id, we need to know which
queue we're talking about
- Action
- The action being performed. At the moment, it's one of
"comment" or "correspond"
It returns two values, the new "RT::CurrentUser" object, and the new
authentication level. The authentication level can be zero, not allowed to
communicate with RT at all, (a "permission denied" error is mailed
to the correspondent) or one, which is the normal mode of operation.
Additionally, if "-1" is returned, then the processing of the
plug-ins stops immediately and the message is ignored.
ENVIRONMENT¶
- EXTENSION
- Some MTAs will route mail sent to user-foo@host or
user+foo@host to user@host and present "foo" in the environment
variable "EXTENSION". Mailgate adds value of this variable to
message in the "X-RT-Mail-Extension" field of the message
header.
See also "--extension" option. Note that value of the environment
variable is always added to the message header when it's not empty even if
"--extension" option is not provided.