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Questions[amazon-ses](server)

Martin Hope
Wren T.
Asked: 2014-03-27 15:05:02 +0800 CST
  • 11

I have an IAM role with the following policy attached:

{
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "*",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

As you can see, full access is granted.

I use the following python to get the convert the IAM credentials to SMTP credentials:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from __future__ import print_function

import base64
import hashlib
import hmac
import json
import struct
import urllib2

METADATA_BASE = 'http://169.254.169.254/2012-01-12/meta-data'


def main():
    access_key_id, secret_access_key = get_access_creds()
    username, password = get_smtp_creds(access_key_id, secret_access_key)

    print('SMTP Username: %s' % username)
    print('SMTP Password: %s' % password)


def get_access_creds():
    url_handle = urllib2.urlopen('%s/iam/security-credentials' %
                                 (METADATA_BASE,))
    role_name = url_handle.read()
    url_handle.close()

    url_handle = urllib2.urlopen('%s/iam/security-credentials/%s' %
                                 (METADATA_BASE, role_name))
    sec_cred_doc = url_handle.read()
    url_handle.close()

    sec_cred_data = json.loads(sec_cred_doc)
    access_key_id =  buffer(sec_cred_data['AccessKeyId'])
    secret_access_key = buffer(sec_cred_data['SecretAccessKey'])

    return access_key_id, secret_access_key


def get_smtp_creds(access_key_id, secret_access_key):
    message = 'SendRawEmail'
    version = 0x02

    sig= hmac.new(
        secret_access_key,
        msg=message,
        digestmod=hashlib.sha256)
    sig_bytes = sig.digest()
    sig_and_version_bytes = (struct.pack('B', version) + sig_bytes)
    smtp_password = base64.b64encode(sig_and_version_bytes)

    return access_key_id, smtp_password

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

When I run this code, some SMTP username and password are output. When I try to send a message with those with say swaks, for example, it fails. Here's an example command line:

swaks -s email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com --from [email protected] --to [email protected] --auth-user <smtp username from script above> --auth-password <smtp password from script above> --tls

Example.com is, of course, a placeholder. The real domain has been verified on my AWS SES account.

In fact, if I run the same code to convert from an IAM user instead of discovering the role credentials from the meta-data, I can use the username and password to send email just fine.

AFAICT, this just isn't allowed with IAM role credentials, which is lame if it's true. I was planning on generating a Postfix config to allow processes on the box to send mail to localhost and have that routed to the SES service. I was trying to avoid putting IAM user credentials on the servers. However, it looks like there may not be a way to avoid that now.

Any thoughts?

amazon-ses
Martin Hope
Rishabh
Asked: 2012-05-25 04:44:17 +0800 CST
  • 9

We have an existing smtp environment setup in an EC2 instance which is used to send Transactional emails like password reset. Now we have a requirement to send System emails to a large user base in the range of > 1000 emails per day.

First question is: Is Amazon SES delivery reliable ?

Second: Should we use our own SMTP instance or SES ? I Think if we use our SMTP server then sending large number of emails will eventually cause the mails landing in spam.

As the mails are important system emails, and not promotional bulk email. Delivery is a major concern.

amazon-ec2 smtp email-server amazon-web-services amazon-ses
Martin Hope
java_pill
Asked: 2011-12-07 15:45:27 +0800 CST
  • 20

I'm new to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS Simple Email Service (SES).

Does AWS SES allow an app to receive emails? I could not find a reference in SES developer guide.

My app requires that received emails for a customer be identified per customer and eventually they will be stored on a database (programatically). Every customer will have an email on the domain hosting the app.

For example say the app is hosted on www.example.com on AWS. Then customers of this myapp can have emails like: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] like that.

If this is not possible in AWS SES, please suggest on alternatives (for high volume emailing) on how this can be done in AWS environment?

amazon-ses
Martin Hope
Jake
Asked: 2011-02-01 22:21:31 +0800 CST
  • 14

I'd like to start using Amazon SES for all emails from our server. We have a few freelance designers with PHP hosting, some Django/Python web apps and also some system utilities which send emails.

So I'd like to have PHP's mail function, the command line mail command and our python apps all be able to use it, preferably without having to set them all up in their own way.

I think what I need is to have something like Postfix running on localhost and using SES for it's delivery but I don't know how to do that.

Amazon's docs state I need to setup my mail transfer agent (MTA) so that it invokes the ses-send-email.pl script. I have the script but I'm not sure how to achieve this.

Am I on the right track? If so, how can I configure Postfix to use that script?

email amazon-ses