Email not working after DX NetOps Portal web server upgrade

Products

• CA Performance Management - Usage and Administration
• DX NetOps

Issue/Introduction

After an upgrade to 20.2.1+, emails from NetOps Portal will not work if your email server advertises STARTTLS until you import the SSL certs into NetOps Portal.

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/187195/

Our email servers do not use SSL certs, can we disable this feature?

How to disable STARTTLS normally used for email sends in DX NetOps Performance Management Portal web server.

Environment

All supported DX NetOps Performance Management releases

Cause

In 20.2.1 we made a change to enable STARTTLS by default. If the email server advertises STARTTLS we will always use it.

Resolution

1. Improve security in your environment by enabling STARTTLS for email servers. Doing so will require the self-signed SSL certificates used by the email servers be imported to the Portal web server.
2. If security via STARTTLS is disabled or not in use for your environments email servers, we'll need to disable in in the Portal web server to allow emails to be sent.
1. In release 20.2.5+ the ability to disable STARTTLS in Portal emails was added.
2. To disable it follow these steps.
1. Login to mysql using this command. Enter the password when prompted.
• mysql netqosportal -unetqos -p
2. Use the following to disable STARTTLS use (set it from true (default) to false). Run it once each for the two DBs, the em and netqosportal DBs.
• replace into em.general values ('Email.Enable.STARTTLS','false');
• replace into netqosportal.general values ('Email.Enable.STARTTLS','false');
3. Verify the change was made by viewing the current value set:
• select value from em.general where attribute='Email.Enable.STARTTLS'\g
• select value from netqosportal.general where attribute='Email.Enable.STARTTLS'\g
4. Once the changes are made restart the Device Manager and Console services on the Portal web server host.
• Stop the services in this order.
1. systemctl stop caperfcenter_devicemanager
2. systemctl stop caperfcenter_console
• Start the services in this order with a 30 second wait between start commands.
1. systemctl start caperfcenter_devicemanager
2. Wait 30 seconds.
3. systemctl start caperfcenter_console