Rails not accessing mailer functions on Google Compute Engine

Question

A Ubuntu 14.04 instance on google compute engine is supposed to host rails3 applications served via Passenger/nginx. The instance has sendmail installed. The GCE instance has firewall rule

Source Ranges: 0.0.0.0/0   Allowed Protocols or Ports: tcp:2525

established and is configured to send mail via sendgrid. telnet smtp.sendgrid.net 2525 does connect and allows to send e-mail via that connection. So traffic should flow.

However none of the following combinations don't hit a timeout. Nginx logs don't pick up the error, but the application's log does state the timeout being reached.

invocations:

ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings =
config.action_mailer.smtp_settings =

followed by basic bloc

{
 :user_name => 'user',
 :password => 'aaabbbb',
 :domain => 'domain.tld',
 :address => 'smtp.sendgrid.net',
 :port => 2525,
 :authentication => :plain,
 :enable_starttls_auto => true
}

atempted in each of environment.rb, application.rb, environments/development.rb

Adding, before or after the settings bloc, either of these or both blocs:

  config.action_mailer.default_url_options = {
    :host => 'smtp.sendgrid.net',
    :port => 2525
  }
  config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :smtp

has no effect on overall behaviour. That's 8 combos that have the same behaviour. Not having access to GCE logs for handling these outgoing messages, I have no idea whether they are actually leaving the application properly.

Frankly, this impediment by GCE is somewhat of a showstopper, IMHO.

** Edit ** launching from console returns the following error stack:

Timeout::Error: execution expired
    from /home/user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p550/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/smtp.rb:541:in `initialize'
    from /home/user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p550/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/smtp.rb:541:in `open'
    from /home/user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p550/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/smtp.rb:541:in `tcp_socket'
    from /home/user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p550/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/smtp.rb:550:in `block in do_start'
    from /home/user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p550/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/smtp.rb:550:in `do_start'
    from /home/user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p550/lib/ruby/1.9.1/net/smtp.rb:520:in `start'
    from /home/user/app/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.5.4/lib/mail/network/delivery_methods/smtp.rb:112:in `deliver!'
    from /home/user/app/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.5.4/lib/mail/message.rb:2129:in `do_delivery'
    from /home/user/app/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/mail-2.5.4/lib/mail/message.rb:232:in `block in deliver'
    from /home/user/app/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/actionmailer-3.2.18/lib/action_mailer/base.rb:415:in `block in deliver_mail'
    from /home/user/app/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-3.2.18/lib/active_support/notifications.rb:123:in `block in instrument'

[...]

Update
Thanks to marilu for pointing out /var/log/syslog.

It is not getting referenced at all by these actions. So yes, it is a rails configuration issue.

Have you tried to send an email from the command line? If this works, then it's probably your configuration in Rails. In the file /var/log/syslog you can see if you're getting an error when sending an email. — Marilu
possible duplicate of Configuration rails3 actionMailer for Google Compute Engine times out — Faizan

wasd-wasd wasd-wasd · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-05T11:34:48

I had the issue too, working on the Google Compute Engine. Port 465 is blocked. Google wants you to use some provider called SendGrid.

...read Google Cloud docs

Rails not accessing mailer functions on Google Compute Engine

1 Answers