How do I prevent Alerts being emailed to the Sender (ReadyNAS 104, Firmware 6.10.7)

[ScotsDon]

Following Google's email security change (June 2022), I got an App Password and entered all the details in Settings/Alerts, which works fine, but I now can't stop emails being sent not only to my Alert Contacts email address, but also to the Sender (From) email address, which I don't want.  This didn't happen before.  I delete my Sender email address from the Alert Contacts and initiate an "Apply and Send Message", putting the Sender email address in the From field, and the Sender email address then re-appears in the Alerts Contacts list, resulting in the email going to the Sender as well.  A circle.

I have now used Sign In With Google (an option on the same page but it's not obvious how to initiate it), with the same result.

So how do I stop email Alerts going to the Sender email??

[Kardano · Accepted solution]

There is another solution:

1. In settings do configuration backup with check: custom - Miscellaneous settings only.

2. then Download configuration

3. Zip file you get open in Total Commander

4. navigate inside zip archive to "etc\frontview\"

5. Open "Alert.conf"

6. In Alert.conf file, AFTER mark "!!!" delete sender e-mail, other leave intact

7. exit and save archive

8. On setting do Restore of config and use editet zip file

9. if your edit was ok and file was saved OK (TC worked that good for me) import will sucseed

10. There is no need for restart, even if NAS say so. You can check Alerts an you will see...

..That all is correct and sender e-mail is no longer set as next adress for alert e-mails.

Easier than downgrade and upgrade FW with all changes...

Doing it like this from time that error appeared.

[XtheUnknown]

This "feature" first appeared in 6.10.3.

One solution is to:

1) Remove existing alerts configuration

2) Manually downgrade the firmware to 6.10.2

3) Configure (and test) your alerts configuration

4) Upgrade back to the latest firmware.

Obviously steps 2-4 should be carried out in as little elapsed time as possible.

[Kardano · Accepted solution]

There is another solution:

1. In settings do configuration backup with check: custom - Miscellaneous settings only.

2. then Download configuration

3. Zip file you get open in Total Commander

4. navigate inside zip archive to "etc\frontview\"

5. Open "Alert.conf"

6. In Alert.conf file, AFTER mark "!!!" delete sender e-mail, other leave intact

7. exit and save archive

8. On setting do Restore of config and use editet zip file

9. if your edit was ok and file was saved OK (TC worked that good for me) import will sucseed

10. There is no need for restart, even if NAS say so. You can check Alerts an you will see...

..That all is correct and sender e-mail is no longer set as next adress for alert e-mails.

Easier than downgrade and upgrade FW with all changes...

Doing it like this from time that error appeared.

[ScotsDon]

Thanks, guys, I will try these solutions in the next few days. Both look promising.

[ScotsDon]

I've finally got round to trying the solution of editing the Miscellaneous backup, and can report it works.  It's easy enough to do, but here are a couple of points I discovered:

1)  I was using Windows 11, and inititially did an "Extract All" on the downloaded zip file, efited the alert.conf file, and re-zipped it.  This resulted in a top level folder appearing with the required backup folders appearing below that.  I'm not sure whether this would have restored correctly but I suspect not.  Anyway, a much simpler way is to double-click on the zip file, which opens it as per a normal folder, and edit the file directly in that (I actually copied the file out, edited it and copy-and-pasted it back again).

2)  When I edited alert.conf, the original file had:

     "email!!SenderEmailAddress AlertEmailAddress,,"

     Note there were only 2x!!

    I changed it to:

     "email!! AlertEmailAddress,,"

    Note that I left a space between the !! and the AlertEmailAddress.  This works but I don't know if it is necessary.

3)  When I did the restore, initially it didn't work.  I was logged in on an account that was supposed to have admin priviledges.  However, when I logged in as "admin", the restore worked.  This explains why I am not sure of things in the above items, because I had already done them in order to try to get the restore to work before logging in as admin.

4)  This is not connected ( I hope) but I have, very recently, been getting occasional Gmail messages saying:

   "this message is not RFC 5322 compliant"

   Sometimes the emails work, sometimes not.  The last one failed but I did note the Sender email address was not included, and I had an earlier one that came through OK also with no Sender included.  Hence this fix seems to eork.

I hope this helps.