Sending emails from research VMs

RVMs can send emails. This is primarily intended to be used as a fallback when services provided can’t leverage central UoM authentication systems, and to send notifications for services that don’t supports other ways of communication.

Emails sent to internal addresses (@manchester.ac.uk) should work by default, whereas sending emails to the outside might require explicit whitelisting and DNS configuration.

Emails to internal UoM addresses

The easy way

All VMs should be provided with an up-and-running Mail Transfer Agent (like Exim or Postfix). Those have been pre-configured to send emails.

Any program acting like a Mail User Agent (like mail from GNU’s mailutils or most email libraries) will either pick it up automatically it or must be configured to point to localhost:25.

NB: you might be flagged if you send large volumes of emails without having previously asked for your machine to be whitelisted. You can request to be whitelisted but keep in mind that sending emails from RVMs is mostly meant as a way to allow email registration when using LDAP/AD is not possible; therefore email traffic should be minimal.

The harder way

Should you not want to run a full-fledged instance of Exim/Postfix, all VMs on RVMI can access smtp.manchester.ac.uk and use it as MTA (NB: mailrouter.mcc.ac.uk and mailrouter.man.ac.uk are alternative names to the same service).

Emails to external addresses

From custom domains

If you own a custom domain, the easiest way is to use an external email delivery service for your custom domain. They are usually cheap enough and are your best bet when it comes to your emails not being classified as spam.

If your custom domain name is UoM-managed, see below.

From UoM subdomains or custom domains managed by the UoM

Open a IT4IT ticket with Linux/Unix Server Management and ask for your specific RVM (including IP address) to be whitelisted to send emails.

If the domain assigned to you is custom (i.e. not a manchester.ac.uk subdomain), you also need to ask, in that same ticket, for your domain to be properly associated to your server (A and PTR DNS records) and for the relevant other fields (SPF, DKIM and, possibly, DMARC records) to be set to appropriate values (those are controlled by UoM). Typically, the MX record won’t be set as your RVM is not meant to receive emails.