Why aren’t scheduled tasks sending email messages?

Owned by Carlos Osorio
Nov 12, 2020
2 min read


SUMMARY

Aug 21, 2015

Symptoms

Emails from scheduled objectives are not being received.

Recommended

  1. Check that the destination email server is defined in the Snare Server Wizard.

  2. Verify that the Snare Server can connect to the SMTP port of the target email server.

  3. Ensure that the destination server is capable of receiving SMTP messages, without requiring sender authentication.

  4. If the Snare Server is not set up to use a DNS server, ensure that the email server address is an IP address.

  5. Verify that the correct destination email address is set, for a sample objective, in the 'Schedule' area of the objective.

  6. Ensure 'Enable email distribution' is turned on, for the objective.

  7. For the purposes of initial problem diagnosis, turn OFF 'No email when there is nothing to report'.

  8. Ensure that the objective is scheduled.

  9. Regenerate the objective from the Snare Server web interface. Although this will not result in an electronic mail message being sent (since the objective was run interactively, rather than as a scheduled task), it should provide an indication of the length of time required for the objective to run. Note that sometimes a task may take an inordinate amount of time to complete due to the data store being of a large size, or the objective event selection criteria being overly broad.

  10. The Snare Server debug log may provide useful insight into electronic mail problems - the contents of the log, displayed by the objective 'System / Administrative Tools / Display the Snare Server Log File'  can be copied/pasted into an email to your Snare Server support team, to provide potential insights into the cause of the problem.

  11. If nothing else has identified the cause of the problem, your Snare Server support team may request that you use one of the command-line applications, to execute a failing objective - this may result in a useful error being sent to the command shell. The command that the Snare Server support team will ask you to run, will look something along the lines of:
    root@snare:~# /data/Snare/SCRunner.php AnObjectiveID

  12. An 'ObjectiveId' is the internal Snare identification number for the misbehaving objective. The ObjectiveID can be found by viewing the page information for the frame that contains the objective [the method to do this, varies by browser].