No email notification on v7.7.1

[blackmater]

I follow the instruction on configuration page to set up ssl as well as sendmail, both not working. I set the MAIL_DRIVER=log. No "laravel.log" in the storage/logs/ directory. Cron jobs set, "php artisan lychee:photos_added_notification" no respond. Any clues?

[blackmater]

smtp and sendmail, sorry for the typo.

[yudin-s]

The command can exit with no output even when it is working, so I would split this into two checks: whether Lychee has anything to send, and whether Laravel mail is configured.

From the current source, lychee:photos_added_notification returns immediately when the Lychee config value new_photos_notification is false. That config is created with default value 0, so make sure the new-photos notification option is enabled in Lychee, not only that cron exists.

Then it loops over users with an email address and over their unread database notifications. It only calls Mail::to(...)->send(new PhotosAdded(...)) when it found unread photo notifications. If there are no unread PhotoAdded notifications for a user, the command will still return 0 and print nothing.

For the mail side, current config/mail.php still uses MAIL_DRIVER as the default mailer env var, so MAIL_DRIVER=log is the right variable name for this app. A practical debug sequence would be:

1. Enable Lychee's new_photos_notification setting.
2. Add a new photo in a way that creates a user notification.
3. Run php artisan lychee:photos_added_notification -vvv from the Lychee install/container.
4. With MAIL_DRIVER=log, check that storage/logs is writable by the PHP user; if no laravel.log appears, that is a logging/storage permission or app path issue before SMTP/sendmail matters.
5. After log mail works, switch back to smtp or sendmail and test that transport separately.

So I would not start with SSL/sendmail yet. First prove the command has pending Lychee notifications and can write the log-mail output.

If this resolves it, please mark the answer as accepted so others can find the same checklist.

[blackmater]

Thanks for quick respond!

1. Already enable new_photos_notification in Admin setup.
2. Storage and logs folder has 755 permission.
3. set MAIL_DRIVER=log, no laravel.log file generated. I can see other logs files in the logs folder, so PHP user must have no issue to writting the directory.

[yudin-s]

Thanks, that points to two narrower checks.

One correction to my earlier wording: I would not use laravel.log as the success signal here. In current Lychee, config/logging.php writes app logs to files like storage/logs/daily.log, errors.log, warning.log, and notice.log. Also, config/mail.php reads the default mailer from MAIL_DRIVER, but I do not see a configured log mailer entry in that file, so MAIL_DRIVER=log may not prove much on this install.

The bigger thing is that the notification command is silent unless there are unread database notifications. The upload path sends PhotoAdded notifications only to email-enabled users who are admins, shared users, or album owners, and it excludes the currently authenticated uploading user. Then lychee:photos_added_notification loops over those users' unreadNotifications; if there are none, it returns 0 with no mail attempt.

So I would check this next inside the same Lychee container:

php artisan tinker --execute='dump(config("mail.default"), config("mail.mailers.log")); \App\Models\User::whereNotNull("email")->withCount("unreadNotifications")->get(["id","email"])->each(fn($u) => dump($u->id, $u->email, $u->unread_notifications_count));'

If the unread counts are 0, create the test by uploading from one account into an album owned by, or shared with, another user that has an email address, then rerun the command. If the counts are greater than 0, switch back to real smtp/sendmail, or add a temporary Laravel log mailer config, and check daily.log / errors.log rather than laravel.log.

That should separate "Lychee has no pending photo notification to send" from "the mail transport is failing."

[ildyria]

Created this to help debugging: #4625
Should be merged soon~ish

[blackmater]

Solved. There is no laravel.log file generated when MAIL_DRIVER set to "log". I setup Sendmail it works, notification send to users after invoke command "php artisan photos_added_notification" in terminal. However admin never receive notitication, I think this is acceptable.