[ Rails + AWS + sendmail: Emails not being sent even with (seemingly) correct config settings? ]

So in my development my emails are sending fine when I change the settings. However in my preview environment on my server, in the logs it looks like emails are sending properly with no errors, but I never receive anything. This applies to not just one mailer, but all of them.

This is my config/environments/preview.rb file:

EdmundWeb::Application.configure do
  # Settings specified here will take precedence over those in config/application.rb

  # Code is not reloaded between requests
  config.cache_classes = true

  # Full error reports are disabled and caching is turned on
  config.consider_all_requests_local       = false
  config.action_controller.perform_caching = true

  config.action_mailer.raise_delivery_errors = true
  config.action_mailer.perform_deliveries = true

  # Disable Rails's static asset server (Apache or nginx will already do this)
  config.serve_static_assets = false

  # Compress JavaScripts and CSS
  config.assets.compress = true

  # Don't fallback to assets pipeline if a precompiled asset is missed
  config.assets.compile = false

  # Generate digests for assets URLs
  config.assets.digest = true

  # Defaults to nil and saved in location specified by config.assets.prefix
  # config.assets.manifest = YOUR_PATH

  # Specifies the header that your server uses for sending files
  # config.action_dispatch.x_sendfile_header = "X-Sendfile" # for apache
  # config.action_dispatch.x_sendfile_header = 'X-Accel-Redirect' # for nginx

  # Force all access to the app over SSL, use Strict-Transport-Security, and use secure cookies.
  # config.force_ssl = true

  # See everything in the log (default is :info)
  config.log_level = :debug

  # Prepend all log lines with the following tags
  # config.log_tags = [ :subdomain, :uuid ]

  # Use a different logger for distributed setups
  # config.logger = ActiveSupport::TaggedLogging.new(SyslogLogger.new)

  # Use a different cache store in production
  # config.cache_store = :mem_cache_store
  config.action_view.cache_template_loading            = true
  config.cache_store = :dalli_store, 'localhost', { :namespace => 'preview' }

  # Enable serving of images, stylesheets, and JavaScripts from an asset server
  # config.action_controller.asset_host = "http://assets.example.com"

  # Precompile additional assets (application.js, application.css, and all non-JS/CSS are already added)
  # config.assets.precompile += %w( search.js )

  # Enable threaded mode
  # config.threadsafe!

  # Enable locale fallbacks for I18n (makes lookups for any locale fall back to
  # the I18n.default_locale when a translation can not be found)
  config.i18n.fallbacks = true

  # Send deprecation notices to registered listeners
  config.active_support.deprecation = :notify

  # Log the query plan for queries taking more than this (works
  # with SQLite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL)
  # config.active_record.auto_explain_threshold_in_seconds = 0.5

  # For Devise
  config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { :host => 'mysite.com' }
  config.to_prepare { Devise::SessionsController.force_ssl }
  config.to_prepare { Devise::RegistrationsController.force_ssl }
  config.to_prepare { Devise::PasswordsController.force_ssl }
end

In my environment.rb I set my mailer to sendmail:

# Load the rails application
require File.expand_path('../application', __FILE__)

# Initialize the rails application
EdmundWeb::Application.initialize!

ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :sendmail

Could it be mailer settings on my AWS server that is preventing my mailer from sending mail?

Answer 1

My AWS machine was running on ubuntu. The fix was running apt-get install postfix as root and accepting all the default answers. How is this not documented anywhere else!