Email verifications are not sent (other emails work)

[email protected]

nodebb version: 4.1.0.
installed via YunoHost on dedicated server

Hello!
I use Gmail to send the emails, with a personal account. I have just set up the forum, so it's only me creating test users for now.

When I test the emailing, all tests work except "verify-email". It doesn't even arrive in spams. I have tried sending to my Gmail address, a Google workspace address and an Infomaniak address, the email verification emails are never to be seen, even in spams.. I can reproduce with the test button in Admin and by creating an account with an email address.

The other emails work: invitations, banned, welcome, etc. The logs don't show errors.

Any idea? Thanks!

[email protected]

creozote the user you test with in the ACP do they have a email set on their user object?

[email protected]

The user I'm connected with has an email address set in Manage/Users.

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By the way, I use PosgreSQL.

[email protected]

Does it have the checkmark next to their email as well? You can also check the db and see if an email is set in the email field.

[email protected]

Yes the checkmark is there for the user I'm testing with. I have access to the PostgreSQL db, but the model is really twisted, I don't know where to find user data.

Table list:

legacy_hash
legacy_list
legacy_object
legacy_set
legacy_string
legacy_zset
searchchat
searchpost
searchtopic
session

[email protected]

baris Here is a typical problematic user hash: the user registered, entered an email (because forced to via configuration), but never received a confirmation email:

{
  "uid": 21,
  "status": "online",
  "joindate": 1748003306464,
  "password": "$2b$12$w...nMKtMZ.",
  "username": "(redacted)",
  "userslug": "(redacted)",
  "lastonline": 1748003306464,
  "profileviews": 1,
  "password:shaWrapped": 1
}

I see the provided email address in the approval queue, but when I approve the user, the email address is not added to the approved user.

[email protected]

I see hashes like that, but they all have "forced" = true, so I think it's email sending tests:

{
  "eid": 4,
  "uid": 1,
  "type": "email-confirmation-sent",
  "email": "(redacted)",
  "force": true,
  "timestamp": 1739543397355,
  "confirm_code": "fa8efa3e-e3a5-4522-b2bd-5656e6b79795"
}

Edit: I'm on nodebb 4.2.0.

[email protected]

creozote If you see that event in the events page that means the code reached all the way to the email sending logic here https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/blob/master/src/user/email.js#L165-L176.

You can open up src/emailer.js and add some console.logs to see if the email is being sent. Put a log before this line and see what the data object has.

[email protected]

That's the issue: the "email-confirmation-sent" events don't occur unless I force them by using the email testing feature in /admin/settings/email => "Email testing".

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In short:

email confirmation works via the email testing in /admin/settings/email => "Email testing"
email confirmation doesn't trigger when a user subscribes

[email protected]

Here are the installed plugins, nothing crazy:

[email protected]

I have edited the JS function this way and rebuilt nodebb:

Emailer.sendViaFallback = async (data) =&gt; {
        // Some minor alterations to the data to conform to nodemailer standard
        data.text = data.plaintext;
        delete data.plaintext;

        // use an address object https://nodemailer.com/message/addresses/
        data.from = {
                name: data.from_name,
                address: data.from,
        };
        delete data.from_name;
        console.log(data);
        await Emailer.fallbackTransport.sendMail(data);
};

I subscribed a user, but I don't see any relevant output in /admin/advanced/logs:

2025-05-23T15:41:36.438Z [43589/1152228] - [32minfo[39m: 🎉 NodeBB Ready
2025-05-23T15:41:36.439Z [43589/1152228] - [32minfo[39m: 🤝 Enabling 'trust proxy'
2025-05-23T15:41:36.441Z [43589/1152228] - [32minfo[39m: 📡 NodeBB is now listening on: 127.0.0.1:xxx
2025-05-23T15:41:36.441Z [43589/1152228] - [32minfo[39m: 🔗 Canonical URL: https://forum.xxx.com/
io: 0 emit [ 'checkSession', 0 ]
io: 0 emit [ 'setHostname', 'xxx.com' ]
io: 0 emit [ 'checkSession', 0 ]
io: 0 emit [ 'setHostname', 'xxx.com' ]
io: 0 on [ { type: 2, nsp: '/', id: 0, data: [ 'meta.reconnected', null ] } ]
io: 0 on [ { type: 2, nsp: '/', id: 7, data: [ 'meta.reconnected', null ] } ]
io: 3 emit [ 'checkSession', 3 ]
io: 3 emit [ 'setHostname', 'xxx.com' ]
io: 3 on [ { type: 2, nsp: '/', id: 11, data: [ 'meta.reconnected', null ] } ]
2.10.184.192 - - [23/May/2025:15:41:39 +0000] "GET /assets/uploads/system/favicon.ico?v=0daa45086ca HTTP/1.1" 404 9 "https://forum.xxx.com/admin/advanced/events" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/136.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
2.10.184.192 - - [23/May/2025:15:41:39 +0000] "GET /api/v3/chats/unread HTTP/1.1" 304 - "https://forum.xxx.com/admin/advanced/events" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/136.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
WARNING: The keyword 'none' must be used as a single argument.
    ../../../bootstrap/scss/mixins/_box-shadow.scss 10:9   box-shadow()
    ../../../bootstrap/scss/forms/_form-control.scss 40:7  @import
    bootstrap/scss/_forms.scss 3:9                         @import
    - 19:9                                                 root stylesheet

WARNING: The keyword 'none' must be used as a single argument.
    ../../../bootstrap/scss/mixins/_box-shadow.scss 10:9  box-shadow()
    ../../../bootstrap/scss/forms/_form-select.scss 32:7  @import
    bootstrap/scss/_forms.scss 4:9                        @import
    - 19:9                                                root stylesheet

io: 3 on [
  {
    type: 2,
    nsp: '/',
    id: 12,
    data: [ 'meta.rooms.leaveCurrent', null ]
  }
]
2.10.184.192 - - [23/May/2025:15:42:55 +0000] "GET /api/admin/advanced/logs?_=1748014516470 HTTP/1.1" 200 - "https://forum.xxx.com/admin/advanced/events" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/136.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"

[email protected]

For new users the verification email should be sent during user creation here put some console.logs there to see if the email is in the data object. The difference is the template used. User.create uses the welcome template and manual verification uses the verify-email template but otherwise the email sending logic is the same.

[email protected]

Thanks, I'll check. Just to be sure: my issue is specific to welcome and verify-email emails. For instance, password reset emails work fine. So the basic email sending logic works.