OMERO.mail

The OMERO server has the ability to send email to any users who have a properly configured email address. OMERO system administrators can then use the omero admin email command to contact those users.

In order to activate the subsystem, minimally the omero.mail.config property will need to be activated. It is likely you will need to change the defaults for the following connection properties:

  • omero.mail.host

  • omero.mail.port

  • omero.mail.smtp.auth

  • omero.mail.smtp.starttls.enable

  • omero.mail.from

All properties can be found under the Mail section of Configuration properties glossary.

Note

A current limitation of the system is that emails are not in a queue and therefore if you log out or otherwise lose your OMERO session before the server has finished sending, the action will abort without completing.

Example secure SMTP configurations

Replace omero@gmail.com and mypassword with your real credentials.

Send email via GMail using TLS (port 587):

omero.mail.config=true
omero.mail.from=omero@gmail.com
omero.mail.host=smtp.googlemail.com
omero.mail.port=587
omero.mail.smtp.auth=true
omero.mail.username=omero@gmail.com
omero.mail.password=mypassword
omero.mail.smtp.starttls.enable=true

Send email via GMail using SSL (port 465):

omero.mail.config=true
omero.mail.from=omero@gmail.com
omero.mail.host=smtp.googlemail.com
omero.mail.port=465
omero.mail.smtp.auth=true
omero.mail.username=omero@gmail.com
omero.mail.password=mypassword
omero.mail.smtp.socketFactory.class=javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory

Example minimum configuration

$ omero config set omero.mail.config true

By default, this will use localhost as the mail server on port 25 and send as the user omero.

To use your actual mail server:

$ omero config set omero.mail.host smtp.university.example

If authentication is required, then also configure:

$ omero config set omero.mail.username USER
$ omero config set omero.mail.password PASS

Setting email addresses

For any user to receive email, a valid email address must be configured. By default, the root OMERO user will not have an email address configured. This can be done from one of the UIs or via the omero obj command:

$ omero obj update Experimenter:0 email=root@university.example

Note

Using a mailing list or an alias for the root user can simplify configuration.

Enabling mail notifications

A number of “mail senders” are available for sending notifications of certain events on the server. Those available include:

  • ServerUpMailSender and ServerDownMailSender which mail when the server goes up or down

  • FailedLoginMailSender which can be configured to send for particular users if a bad password is used

  • ObjectMailSender which can be configured to send an email under various conditions. Instances which are configured include:

    • newUserMailSender which sends an email every time a user is created

    • newCommentMailSender which sends an email every time a user’s image is commented on by another user

To activate the senders, the etc/blitz/mail-senders.example can be copied to a file ending with “.xml”.

OMERO.web error reporting

OMERO.web will email the users listed in the omero.web.admins whenever the application identify broken link (HTTP status code 404) or raises an unhandled exception that results in an internal server error (HTTP status code 500). This gives the administrators immediate notification of any errors. The omero.web.admins will get a description of the error, a complete Python traceback, and details about the HTTP request that caused the error.

Note

Reporting errors requires property omero.web.debug set to False and works together with OMERO.web error handling.

Further configuration

Finally, if the above mail configuration properties do not cover your needs, you can add your own implementation as described under Extending OMERO.server. The related property is omero.mail.bean:

$ omero config set omero.mail.bean myMailImplementation