How can I stop the "New software packages available" emails?

[peterwargo]

I've hunted all over for this, and I'm a bit stump[ed. Recently, I configured our cluster nodes to be able to send email to our internal mail relay, which we use to forward alerts to Google (who we recently switched to for corporate email). It's a bridge to get email from devices that don't play well with google, and unfortunately right now it triggers alerts. The "New software packages available" messages that started coming in are really not alert-worthy, so I'd like to suspend them for now until we reach a point where we can route them correctly. But I've found no way to shut them off.

(Side note: we were also getting numerous SMART emails, triggered by an incompatibility with smartd and our RAID controllers), I had to kill smartd to stop them. I'd rather not kill the process that looks for new packages, but I would like to shut it up.)

Any suggestions?

 

[leesteken]

You could temporarily remove your subscription key from each node? It will prevent those e-mails but also block (manually) installing updates (unless you switch repositories).
If you expect to fix the e-mails soon and don't worry too much about not applying a few updates, it might be the least invasive way to disable it.

If someone knows which port is used for sending these e-mails, you might add a blocking rule for outgoing e-mails to the firewall settings for the node.

 

[peterwargo]

You could temporarily remove your subscription key from each node? It will prevent those e-mails but also block (manually) installing updates (unless you switch repositories).
If you expect to fix the e-mails soon and don't worry too much about not applying a few updates, it might be the least invasive way to disable it.

If someone knows which port is used for sending these e-mails, you might add a blocking rule for outgoing e-mails to the firewall settings for the node.

Removing the licenses would be problematic, kind of like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. And, we need other emails from the platform. I was hoping there was an underlying Debian process running via cron or the like but I've not been able to find it. We may have to just bite the bullet and fix the email relay if we can find the time. There's always modifying the local installation of posstfix to talk to Google directly, but I try to steer clear of customizations as much as possible in the event that someone other than me needs to diagnose a problem.

 

[fabian]

the pve-daily-update.timer calls pveupdate, which among other things, does an apt update and notifications for subscribers. it also refreshes the container template indices, and renews TLS certificates (both self-signed and ACME-issued ones).

 

[guletz]

Hi,

Why you do not create a filter on your internal mail who will drop unwanted mails to be forwarded to gmail?

Bafta / Good luck !

 

[peterwargo]

I could modify the postfix server that does the relay; however that would be pretty much the same amoutn of work as fixing it. Which is probably what I'll end up doing. It would be very nice if Proxmox VE had an option to say what emails the host sends or doesn't send. Or even where specific types of emails should be sent. After all, I can specify it for some tasks, like backups.

 

[1977er]

Following this thread I assume the email notification is sent by a proxmox routine available only for subscribers.

Is there any way to disable the notification? I'm perfectly fine with running "apt update" in the background, but the notification is really spam. I have lots of boxes under ansible control, so the "upgrade process" is handled otherwise. I don't need another shell script which nags me on a daily basis.

I love OpenSource and I want to throw some money into the hat from time to time. But not for the price of annoying emails. ;-)

(And no, deactivating the subscription or disabling the worldwide email system is not an option.) ;-)

 

[fabian]

Following this thread I assume the email notification is sent by a proxmox routine available only for subscribers.

Is there any way to disable the notification? I'm perfectly fine with running "apt update" in the background, but the notification is really spam. I have lots of boxes under ansible control, so the "upgrade process" is handled otherwise. I don't need another shell script which nags me on a daily basis.

I love OpenSource and I want to throw some money into the hat from time to time. But not for the price of annoying emails. ;-)

(And no, deactivating the subscription or disabling the worldwide email system is not an option.) ;-)

https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1295

maybe we should get around to implementing that - the original reporter unfortunately didn't send the CLA so the process stalled..

 

[1977er]

I would appreciate that. Thanks in advance.

 

[Mike.a]

Is there any update on this? I'm in the same boat as the original poster and came here with the same reasoning as 1977er. Just wondering if things may have changed after almost a year.

 

[akv]

Are there any changes?

 

[mbest]

That bugzilla entry was interesting, and hopefully it will make it into a future version of Proxmox. I tried modifying some of the code mentioned in there, and then went to try the same thing on the Proxmox backup server, but the email sending is embedded in a binary.

I decided to just add a postfix header_checks instead as a quick workaround.

/etc/postfix/main.cf:
header_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/header_checks

/etc/postfix/header_checks:
/Subject: New software packages available/ DISCARD