Exim fails to send Gitlab message with "no recipient addresses" error

Question

I am setting up a Gitlab server and am finishing the installation.

While everything with Gitlab runs fine, the verification of email addresses fails. I am getting the following error:

Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:41:50 +0100
From: Mail Delivery System <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Mail failure - no recipient addresses

A message that you sent using the -t command line option contained no
addresses that were not also on the command line, and were therefore
suppressed. This left no recipient addresses, and so no delivery could
be attempted.

------ This is a copy of your message, including all the headers. ------

Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:41:50 +0100
From: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Subject: Confirmation instructions
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html;
 charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<p>Welcome shade!</p>

  <p>You can confirm your email ([email protected]) through the link below:</p>

<p><a href="https://git.example.com/users/confirmation?confirmation_token=XXXXXXXXXXXXX">Confirm my account</a></p>

Is this a bug in Gitlab, or have I messed up the Exim configuration?

Answer 1

As you can see in description of exim command line options, if command line option -t is used then recipients are taken from standard input of exim command (from headers of email) and then recipients taken from command line are subtracted from this list. Looks like you have same recipients in command line and in email headers.

You can remove it from command line, if configuration of Gitlab permit this, or you can use no_extract_addresses_remove_arguments options in Exim configuration, so Exim try to add recipients from command line and not subtracts them (duplicates will be handled correctly, so you should get what you want).

Answer 2

According to this issue, it´s a bug either in upstream Ruby or Exim4.

A patch is available:

# diff -u /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/config/application.rb.org /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/config/application.rb
--- /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/config/application.rb.org 2014-09-11 16:21:11.641493626 +0200
+++ /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/config/application.rb     2014-09-11 16:21:51.959381839 +0200
@@ -7,6 +7,9 @@

 module Gitlab
   class Application < Rails::Application
+    #Fix for compatibility issue with exim as explained at https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/4866
+    config.action_mailer.sendmail_settings = { :arguments => "-i" }
+
     # Settings in config/environments/* take precedence over those specified here.
     # Application configuration should go into files in config/initializers
     # -- all .rb files in that directory are automatically loaded.

Restart Gitlab afterwards:

gitlab-ctl restart