Solved: Sending of HCP Reports via E-Mail

mbaerwolff · ‎2024-05-13

Hey Checkmates,

we have installed HCP on our gateways and integrated it into SmartConsole.
Now we would like to have the reports sent to us by e-mail.
Are any of you already using this and if so, how was it implemented?

Thank you in advance.

Best Regards,
Maria

Bob_Zimmerman · ‎2024-05-13

I'm not doing this, but my HCP output is typically 2.5-3 MB per cluster member. That seems awfully large to send via email on a regular basis. I would instead look into setting up a private SSH key on each firewall and a central server for them to send the HCP files to via SCP.

If you're sure this is something you want to do, R81.10 and R81.20 have msmtp 1.4.21 (released 2010-07-03) present as /sbin/sendmail. It allows you to specify a raw SMTP envelope. I haven't tried specifying attachments like that, but my understanding is they're just a MIME block with the attachment data in base64. I would start with something like this:

MTA=10.20.30.40 # Your SMTP relay
mailRecipients="address1@domain.example; address2@domain.example"
filenameToSend="Some file generated by the firewall.pdf"

printf "From: root@$(hostname)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: My super-cool email
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
	boundary=\"outer_boundary\"
To: ${mailRecipients}

--outer_boundary
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
	boundary=\"inner_boundary\"

--inner_boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"UTF-8\"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Plaintext version of this email!
--inner_boundary
Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"UTF-8\"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<html><body>HTML version of this email!</body></html>
--inner_boundary--
--outer_boundary
Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"${filenameToSend}\"

$(cat "${filenameToSend}" | base64)
--outer_boundary--" \
| /sbin/sendmail --host="${MTA}" --read-envelope-from -t

This example is for a PDF. You will need to update the Content-Type in the bottom section with the MIME type of the file you want to send. I forget the type for GZIP data (probably application/gzip). I also forget the rules for generating the Content-Type boundaries. It might accept arbitrary strings like this, or it may need to be some kind of hash or something.

I use this basic pattern to send plaintext emails from my management servers. I haven't tried to send a multipart email like this before.

View solution in original post

Bob_Zimmerman · ‎2024-05-13

I'm not doing this, but my HCP output is typically 2.5-3 MB per cluster member. That seems awfully large to send via email on a regular basis. I would instead look into setting up a private SSH key on each firewall and a central server for them to send the HCP files to via SCP.

If you're sure this is something you want to do, R81.10 and R81.20 have msmtp 1.4.21 (released 2010-07-03) present as /sbin/sendmail. It allows you to specify a raw SMTP envelope. I haven't tried specifying attachments like that, but my understanding is they're just a MIME block with the attachment data in base64. I would start with something like this:

MTA=10.20.30.40 # Your SMTP relay
mailRecipients="address1@domain.example; address2@domain.example"
filenameToSend="Some file generated by the firewall.pdf"

printf "From: root@$(hostname)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: My super-cool email
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
	boundary=\"outer_boundary\"
To: ${mailRecipients}

--outer_boundary
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
	boundary=\"inner_boundary\"

--inner_boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"UTF-8\"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Plaintext version of this email!
--inner_boundary
Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"UTF-8\"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<html><body>HTML version of this email!</body></html>
--inner_boundary--
--outer_boundary
Content-Type: application/pdf
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"${filenameToSend}\"

$(cat "${filenameToSend}" | base64)
--outer_boundary--" \
| /sbin/sendmail --host="${MTA}" --read-envelope-from -t

This example is for a PDF. You will need to update the Content-Type in the bottom section with the MIME type of the file you want to send. I forget the type for GZIP data (probably application/gzip). I also forget the rules for generating the Content-Type boundaries. It might accept arbitrary strings like this, or it may need to be some kind of hash or something.

I use this basic pattern to send plaintext emails from my management servers. I haven't tried to send a multipart email like this before.

RobRobbson · ‎2024-05-14

This is a great guide, we were looking for something like this!
It would be sufficient if the entire HTML check was not sent as *.tag.gz to save some data.
Surely it would be easier to write the text-based CLI output into an email?
Can the code be adapted to this?

Bob_Zimmerman · ‎2024-05-15

As long as you can get the HTML file you want, I would start my experimentation with something like this:

MTA=10.20.30.40 # Your SMTP relay
mailRecipients="address1@domain.example; address2@domain.example"
htmlFileToSend="Some File.html"

printf "From: root@$(hostname)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: My super-cool email
Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"UTF-8\"
To: ${mailRecipients}

$(cat "${htmlFileToSend}")" \
| /sbin/sendmail --host="${MTA}" --read-envelope-from -t

It will probably need some processing to turn HTML meant for use in a web browser to HTML suitable for an email. No idea what tags work in email, for example.

Also note that HTML meant to be viewed in a browser typically includes a lot of references to external resources like images. Those could probably be replaced with characters (remember, you have access to all of UTF-8) without too much trouble. Would take a fair bit of experimentation to figure out what replacements look decent.

RobRobbson · ‎2024-05-15

The last days I've made script (with a little help of ChatGPT 😉 ) which work now in our lab environment.
It calls the hcp --show-last-full command and writes the output to a file.
This file is also copied to an FTP-Server and, send via mail-attachment to multiple recipients.

I trigger the script over the GAiA Job-Scheduler or simply over the crontab command.

Maybe I can post a cleaned up version of the script here if it's desired.

_Val_ · ‎2024-05-15

@RobRobbson @Bob_Zimmerman and everybody else. Just in case, a clean and flexible version of such a script could be a good candidate for our recent ToolBox Contest.

Consider this 🙂

the_rock · ‎2024-05-15

Hey Maria,

What Bob advised is probably your best bet, but if you need an official confirmation, maybe open TAC case to confirm.

Best,

Andy

Best,
Andy

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Sending of HCP Reports via E-Mail