Gigantic blunder caused by a lack of warnings

[tsu.douady]

I just configured today a Gitlab instance on my Cloudron.
Not really knowing what the setting was about, I configured Gitlab's incoming email to be my personal email.

This induced a huge shitstorm, because the Gitlab app suddenly replied to every email I ever received, saying this:

Unfortunately, your email message to GitLab could not be processed.
We couldn't figure out what the email is for. Please create your issue or comment through the web interface.

You're receiving this email because of your account on gitlab.sulvia.fr. Manage all notifications · Help

I only found out because my email address was flooded with message delivery failures coming from various no-reply addresses. The obvious big problem here is that every person that ever contacted me just got flooded with gitlab emails. One for each exchange we've had.

I really feel like it shouldn't be this easy to end up in this situation. It's really badly lacking a big warning somewhere to tell me that it's a bad idea to attach an inbox containing thousands of existing emails to the Gitlab app.

Maybe I'm not in the correct forum category. Please let me know if I'm in the wrong place.

[james]

Hello @tsu.douady and welcome to the Cloudron Community Forum

Cloudron does configure outgoing mails for the GitLab App automatically.

@tsu.douady said in Gigantic blunder caused by a lack of warnings:

I really feel like it shouldn't be this easy to end up in this situation. It's really badly lacking a big warning somewhere to tell me that it's a bad idea to attach an inbox containing thousands of existing emails to the Gitlab app.

Good point.
We will add this warning to https://docs.cloudron.io/packages/gitlab/#incoming-email

[nebulon]

Curiously nothing about that possible side-effect is mentioned in the gitlab docs either https://docs.gitlab.com/administration/incoming_email/ or at least I didn't see it.

[necrevistonnezr]

@tsu.douady said in Gigantic blunder caused by a lack of warnings:

I only found out because my email address was flooded with message delivery failures coming from various no-reply addresses. The obvious big problem here is that every person that ever contacted me just got flooded with gitlab emails. One for each exchange we've had.

I‘m genuinely curious how this is possible. So you connected your personal email account via IMAP? And even then, AFAIK Gitlab does not process read emails in an IMAP account (i.e. they have the ˋseenˋ flag) - were the messages Gitlab replied to unread?

[necrevistonnezr]

@nebulon said in Gigantic blunder caused by a lack of warnings:

Curiously nothing about that possible side-effect is mentioned in the gitlab docs either https://docs.gitlab.com/administration/incoming_email/ or at least I didn't see it.

It could be clearer but it does say

„We recommend using an email address that receives only messages that are intended for the GitLab instance“

and it goes on about „dedicated“ addresses….