Django not sending error emails - how can I debug?

Question

I'm using Django 1.8. This is my base settings file:

LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': False,
    'filters': {
        'require_debug_false': {
            '()': 'django.utils.log.RequireDebugFalse'
        }
    },
    'handlers': {
        'mail_admins': {
            'level': 'ERROR',
            'filters': ['require_debug_false'],
            'class': 'django.utils.log.AdminEmailHandler'
        }
    },
    'loggers': {
        'django.request': {
            'handlers': ['mail_admins'],
            'level': 'ERROR',
            'propagate': True,
        },
    }
}
ADMINS = (
   ('ME', '[email protected]'),
)
MANAGERS = ADMINS

And these are my production settings:

########## EMAIL CONFIGURATION
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_HOST_USER = '[email protected]'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = utils.get_env_setting('GMAIL_PASS')
EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX = '[%s] ' % SITE_NAME
SERVER_EMAIL = EMAIL_HOST_USER
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = EMAIL_HOST_USER
########## END EMAIL CONFIGURATION

It used to send error email in production, but has stopped. I've set up a page that returns 500 errors so that I can test this further - no emails being sent when I load it.

I've tried debugging the obvious things:

• I can still log into [email protected] and it doesn't seem to have been blocked.
• I've checked my spam filter.
• I'm certain that DEBUG is set false.
• I believe the GMAIL_PASS environment variable is available to the Django user.

How can I debug this further?

Answer 1

• For the debugging part of the question

  @zopieux commented:

  First, check that mails are being sent. Set:

  EMAIL_HOST = 'localhost'
  EMAIL_PORT = 1025
  EMAIL_USE_TLS = False
  EMAIL_USE_SSL = False
  

  Then run a dummy SMTP server:

  python -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:1025

  If this works, you can revert the changes and manually send an email as described in this relevant question:

  from django.core.mail import EmailMessage
  email = EmailMessage('Hello', 'World', to=['[email protected]'])
  email.send()
  

• For the feature of using Google as SMTP server:

  The most popular -and updated- answer of the question states that Google does not support anymore this feature (2016) and that you should try to find another SMTP server.

I have posted my working logging configuration for reference.