A Linux server's own email solution can be used to receive alerts about LinuxGSM.
Sending emails
LinuxGSM will send an email using the mail command.
Postfix or equivalent must be setup and correctly configured before sending emails. Failure to correctly configure Postfix and a domain for your server will mean the email alert may be flagged as spam or not arrive at all. Configuring postfix is not covered here, but there are many tutorials online to help.
If you only need to relay outbound alert emails through an external SMTP provider rather than run a full mail server, nullmailer is a lightweight alternative to Postfix. On Debian/Ubuntu, LinuxGSM will detect an existing nullmailer setup (/etc/nullmailer) and install mailutils alongside it instead of postfix, so an existing nullmailer relay won't be overwritten by LinuxGSM's dependency check.
Free SMTP relay options
Sending mail directly from a home/VPS IP is likely to be flagged as spam. Relaying through a dedicated email provider improves deliverability, and several offer a free tier suitable for the low volume of alert emails LinuxGSM sends:
1,000 emails/month
6,000 emails/month (200/day)
3,000 emails/month
100 emails/day
Any of these can be used as the smarthost for Postfix or nullmailer — see the provider's SMTP relay setup docs for the exact Postfix/nullmailer configuration.
Enable Email alerts
To enable email alerts you will need to add an email address to the LinuxGSM config.
# Email Alerts | https://docs.linuxgsm.com/alerts/email
emailalert="off"
email="email@example.com"
emailfrom=""Last updated
Was this helpful?