JIRA mail server settings in Confluence et al

[Oliver Lade]

After fighting with mail server configuration for months, I tried using JIRA's option to connect to Gmail, and amazingly it worked right out of the box, with nothing required on the server.

However I am unable to set up SMTP servers the same way for Confluence, FishEye, Bamboo or Stash. All of them time out and fail to send a test message with various errors. Confluence gets the proxy error below, for example, even though the settings are the same (as much as possible, given the limited fields Confluence provides).

How does one resolve the differences in mail server setup options between tools and get them all to work like JIRA? Or if possible, is it possible to share a single JNDI configuration between all tools?

[hsuhailah · Accepted solution]

How does one resolve the differences in mail server setup options between tools and get them all to work like JIRA? Or if possible, is it possible to share a single JNDI configuration between all tools?

I guess this is because each application has different architecture and were different in design. I don't think it's possible to share a single JNDI though. JIRA uses java:comp/env/mail/GmailSmtpServer for its JNDI location while Confluence uses java:comp/env/mail/Session.

I had many times configuring Confluence to use GMail as the mail server using the following documentation and it works like a charm: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/How+do+I+configure+Confluence+to+use+GMail+as+the+mail+server

The screen shot indicates that there could be an issue with the proxy configuration. You can try to check if the mail server is working properly when the proxy is bypassed and Confluence is accessed directly through localhost/IP. You might also want to double check on the proxy setting against this documentation: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Running+Confluence+behind+Apache

[Oliver Lade]

I never really got this working, but this sounds about right. I think there is a proxy thing going on behind the scenes, but I still wonder why JIRA is able to work around it so easily, and every other Atlassian product seems to have its own mess of configuration.

[Luis Mayora]

You have to move a couple of jars from WEB-INF/lib to installation-dir/lib. I believe is something related to activationxxx.jar and mailxxx.jar

[Oliver Lade]

Interestingly, I didn't have to move those files out of WEB_INF for JIRA, and moving them for Confluence (and restarting) doesn't help, unfortunately.

[Luis Mayora]

Oh no, I mean to say move those files in the same JIRA instance(WEB-INF/lib) to (JIRA/lib).

No confluence involved here.

Check this here https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Using+Gmail+as+a+JIRA+Mail+Server

[Oliver Lade]

Sorry, I could have been a bit clearer. JIRA email is working fine, no problems there. I'm wondering why it is so easy to set up, and yet every other program (Confluence, FishEye, Bamboo, Stash) refuse to work. Thus it's interesting that I didn't have to move those JARs for JIRA, and suggests something else is to blame.