E-Mail Notify when new Firmware is available

[xenon2008]

Hello everyone,

I haven't been an OPNSense user for that long, but now my OPNSense is actually running quite well.
And I don't really miss Sophos UTM anymore ;)

But what I still don't understand to this day is why there is no function to receive an email when a new version is available?
Any other manufacturer can do this, that shouldn't be a problem or am I wrong?

Yes, I know, i could activate email notification in the "Announcements"...
All well and good, but why take this detour?

My additional problem is that the notifications about new threads in the announcements do not work or no longer work.
So far I have only received one email, namely in April 2024, when a new business version was released.
Not a single one since then (no, not SPAM either... I excluded OPNsense emails)
I've already deactivated and reactivated Notify, but that didn't help.
There was no email notification about 24.1.7 & 24.1.7_4.

Does anyone have a tip why this doesn't work?
At least I've received only one email notification so far...

For that reason alone, I would like something like this to be checked directly from the firewall without a forum and, if necessary, the admin to be notified by email!

So I have to go into the web interface regularly and check for updates, only to then find out, as that 24.7.1_4 is there and once again I didn't get any information :(

Do you have any ideas why the forum notifications aren't working properly?
I'm currently using GMX as a provider, if this should be important.

Kindly Regards
xenon

[chemlud]

Better solution imho

- have an eye on this https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?board=11.0

- read release notes, have an eye on the forum for some time, depending on your robustness start installing some hours to some days after new release becomes available. ;-)

[franco]

Hi,

We've deprecated mailing lists a long time ago. It wasn't my favourite decision to carry forward but it has been good and I'm not missing it.

The technical machinery between a user wanting an update mail in a free product but having to register somewhere dumping personal information like an email address is challenging in terms of data protection and maintenance costs. We would like to simply avoid it.

The API has means to check for new versions and so has Monit. The setup isn't ideal because the technical part is offloaded to you, but at least you are in charge of your data and frequency and format.  :)


Cheers,
Franco

[xenon2008]

Good Morning,

OK thanks.
But does anyone have an idea why the notifications from the forum about new Topics via e-mail are not arriving at my GMX address?

[franco]

You need an Email provider that allows you to access SMTP directly in order to send out mails (or use vendor product "x" with accompanying horrible API "y").

GMX in particular doesn't offer that access unless you pay for it so a Google Mail is a good alternative to that (and yes you can send it to GMX then, too).

Most companies may already have a sane mail provider to use though.


Cheers,
Franco

[xenon2008]

You need an Email provider that allows you to access SMTP directly in order to send out mails (or use vendor product "x" with accompanying horrible API "y").

GMX in particular doesn't offer that access unless you pay for it so a Google Mail is a good alternative to that (and yes you can send it to GMX then, too).

Most companies may already have a sane mail provider to use though.


Cheers,
Franco

Hello Franco,

I actually meant the forum notifications to my GMX address, which doesn't work.
I have set up a notification for new topics under "announcements", but no email is received by GMX. Not even in the spam folder

Kindly Regards
xenon

[franco]

I think this is a GMX specific issue now, because we run on Office 365 since a few weeks. Our end says these have been delivered to the recipient.


Cheers,
Franco

[munroe]

I am subscribed to the announcements subforum. I got an email for 24.1.10, but never got any emails for anything in the 24.7 series. I am using Fastmail as my provider which has no issues with anyone that I know of -- this would be the very first. There is no evidence of it hitting my spam folder. If anyone at OPNsense is aware of deliverability issues to Fastmail I'd like to report it. If you're using O365 it should not be an issue.

I think it would be cool to have a better mechanism to notify users of updates, especially critical security updates, than to depend on the forum software. Maybe just a plain old mailing list? Or the system itself could email or notify the admin when it sees updates? I really want to know when hotfixes are released so I can apply them.

[munroe]

I did actually get the email for 24.7.1 just now. But the posts in the same thread for the other 24.7 releases never delivered one. Maybe something was changed?

[franco]

Most likely lost on some MTA due to some good intentions spam rule.


Cheers,
Franco

[munroe]

I think that's good evidence for email via the forum to not be the best way to deliver update notifications to admins. Is there a better method besides refreshing the dashboard all the time? Maybe a plugin that is more aggressive? Do critical security hotfixes get auto-applied?

Maybe since we already have monit, it can be an event in monit? I'm just spitballing here -- I'm honestly surprised the best we have is "subscribe to the forum but it may not arrive". I want security updates as quickly as possible.

Regarding the email itself, this would be the first and only time I had an expected email not delivered at all since I migrated to Fastmail. So maybe there is something fixable here that would benefit many others.

[munroe]

Email was delivered for 24.7.3, but not for 24.7.4. I wish there were a better mechanism than depending on forum software delivering email. I don't feel comfortable getting hotfix notifications this way. Surely there is a better method -- I would think security hotfixes and notifications would be very high priority

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

Well each OPNsense uses this API for the Announcement Widget:

/api/core/dashboard/product_info_feed

It uses this link:

https://github.com/opnsense/core/blob/bd037cc6555b5953241760553cb72e6d6147d3da/src/opnsense/mvc/app/controllers/OPNsense/Core/Api/DashboardController.php#L219

https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?board=11.0&action=.xml;limit=5;type=rss2

Any tool that turns RSS into an Email for you could be used here. Even Outlook can subscribe to them.

[yeraycito]

It is not what you are looking for but it may help:

https://github.com/Red-Swingline/OPNsenseManager

[munroe]

Well each OPNsense uses this API for the Announcement Widget:

/api/core/dashboard/product_info_feed

It uses this link:

https://github.com/opnsense/core/blob/bd037cc6555b5953241760553cb72e6d6147d3da/src/opnsense/mvc/app/controllers/OPNsense/Core/Api/DashboardController.php#L219

https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?board=11.0&action=.xml;limit=5;type=rss2

Any tool that turns RSS into an Email for you could be used here. Even Outlook can subscribe to them.

Thanks -- that is useful to get something going for myself.

But the long term situation is scary. When (not if) OPNSense has a 0day, there is no way to even alert people running it. A notification engine should be a core feature of OPNsense. Monit is the closest thing we have to that right now. But in the absence of that there should at the very least be an official mailing list. That's how so many other projects work. To rely on the forum software for this is demonstrably not workable -- it doesn't even send emails properly half the time.

I really think security updates should be taken much more seriously. OPNsense needs a way to mass notify about security updates. This can be opt-in but it needs to be put clearly in front of admins when they install or first-run.