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I keep seeing references to Inbound email in GitHub Enterprise online. I manage a Github Enterprise instance running v2.4.1. Nowhere I can find a place to configure that. I see the usual 'Email' settings in the management console, but that only has settings for outbound email.

My users are requesting the ability to reply to PRs or comments from their email and have that response posted directly to the relevant page on the internal Github website. Is this possible?

WreckeR
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2 Answers2

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Responding to my original question. After looking around and raising a ticket with github support, I figured that to make this work I will need to punch a hole through our company firewall. Since I can't do that, I came up with an alternative. I have made my solution available on Github: https://github.com/wrecker/github-mda

Solution

Github Enterprise sends out notification emails with the reply-to address set to reply+NN..NN@reply.[hostname]. Here [hostname] is the FQDN of the GHE instance. E.g: github.priv.mycompany.net.

  • Create DNS records for reply.github.priv.mycompany.net with your DNS provider.
    • You will at the minimum need MX records for this sub-domain.
  • Set up email delivery to reply.github.priv.mycompany.net with an external email provider (Google Apps, Zoho, Exchange Online or roll your own)
  • Use fetchmail to retrieve messages
  • When fetchmail downloads new emails it forwards them to a custom MDA. The MDA then filters messages that have a TO address of the form reply+NN..NN@reply.[hostname] and delivers them to the SMTP server on the GHE instance.
WreckeR
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So the mail settings on the console window are for both outbound AND inbound mail.

The only other thing that needs to be done to get email reply to work is that you need an MX record in your DNS for the reply, like

reply.<hostname>

Also, you may need to make sure that your SMTP server/relay can contact port 25 on your GHE instance. Depending on firewalls where you work, your mileage may vary.

Al Neill
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  • After I posted my question here, I raised a ticket with Github Enterprise support. Turns out the page with instructions for setting up Inbound email was not linked anywhere in their online docs. Its now available in their admin guide. As you mentioned opening up port 25 on our Enterprise instance was tricky. I ended up writing up a custom solution for pulling emails from an external mail provider and pushing it to our GHE instance. Watch this space for the full solution that worked for us. – WreckeR Feb 04 '16 at 23:17