smtp is not picked up rather console is used (found in both settings.py and notifier_env)

[l1ph0x]

This issue concerns Notifier on open-release/ginkgo.master. (Native install on Ubuntu Server 16.04).

I could not make Notifier work until I dig in the code and did a tiny change as follows

1. In the env file
   nano /edx/app/notifier/notifier_env
   set the value
   export EMAIL_BACKEND="django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend"

2. In settings file
   nano /edx/app/notifier/src/notifier/settings.py
   erased the whole EMAIL_BACKEND block, and changed the value to
   EMAIL_BACKEND="django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend"

[kirkerafael]

Just in case anyone else has the same problem, here's my take on it:
(Native install of open-release/ironwood.master)

The root of the problem is that notifier-celery-workers service is configured differently than notifier-scheduler-supervisor. Compare configuration files found in /edx/app/supervisor/conf.available.d/.

notifier-scheduler.conf fires a script /edx/app/notifier/notifier-scheduler-supervisor.sh, which in turn loads env file /edx/app/notifier/notifier_env.
notifier-celery-workers.conf on the other hand contains configuration as environment declaration, and runs bare-bones python manage.py celery worker -l INFO command.

Everything works more predictably if you delete the environment line from notifier-celery-workers.conf, replace command line with command=/edx/app/notifier/notifier-celery-workers.sh, and create script /edx/app/notifier/notifier-celery-workers.sh like so:

#!/bin/bash

source /edx/app/notifier/notifier_env
cd /edx/app/notifier/src

export PID='/var/tmp/notifier-scheduler.pid'
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

/edx/app/notifier/virtualenvs/notifier/bin/python manage.py celery worker -l INFO

(to mirror the notifier-scheduler-supervisor.sh).
Then

sudo /edx/bin/supervisorctl reread
sudo /edx/bin/supervisorctl update

to reload your service and now EMAIL_BACKEND, and also US_API_KEY are read from notifier_env file.

[angonz]

Great workaround!
Do you know how to fix it in configuration/ansible, for new installations?