January 6, 2023

Ghost Issue

Rarely is there something homelab-related that I can’t readily figure out with a modicum of effort. Seriously, just aGoogle search with my issue usually leads pretty quickly to a solution. Sometimes, I may have to ask on a support forum, but I have always found an answer. Until now. My Ghost install on the Norman Mailer Society just will not send out newsletters.

The Mailgun API—the integral part of sending newsletters—works fine via the command line, but when I try to use it via Ghost, I get “Uh-oh. Your post has been published but the email failed to send. Email service is currently unavailable - please try again. Please verify your email settings if the error persists.” I get a “forbidden” error in the log. I cannot find anything similar with a search, nor did reinstalling help—which I reluctantly did at the suggestion of a moderator on the Ghost Forum. I am at a loss, and I’m having second thoughts about using Ghost at all. This may be the first time since I started my own homelab that I have not been able to solve a problem like this with a quick Google search. It’s frustrating.

The really confusing part of this is that I have three other Ghost installs on the same server that are set up in the very same way, and they all work just fine. WTF? The DNS is all configured correctly; I even deleted and reinstalled Mailgun entries. That did not help. Mailgun is clueless, and I don’t think it’s an issue with their service, since I have no errors in their logs. The infuriating thing is that the Mailgun API works great via a command line test. Seriously. WTF? Here’s the error from the log on my server:

{"name":"Log","hostname":"artemis","pid":79681,"level":50,"err":{"domain":"https://normanmailersociety.org","message":"Forbidden","stack":""},"msg":"Forbidden","time":"2023-01-07T17:26:25.457Z","v":0}

Since this issue is plaguing me, I’m truly surprised that other homelabbers are not experiencing something similar. And the worst part: while I don’t need to have newsletter delivery, this is where it would be the most useful.

Maybe Norman is cursing my technology efforts from beyond the grave.