--- permalink: / --- GNU Mailman 3 Deployment with Docker ==================================== Table of Contents ----------------- * [GNU Mailman 3 Deployment with Docker](#gnu-mailman-3-deployment-with-docker) * [Release](#release) * [Rolling Releases](#rolling-releases) * [Security](#security) * [Dependencies](#dependencies) * [Configuration](#configuration) * [Mailman-web](#mailman-web) * [Mailman-Core](#mailman-core) * [Running](#running) * [Setting up your MTA](#setting-up-your-mta) * [uwsgi](#uwsgi) * [Setting up your web server](#setting-up-your-web-server) * [Serving static files](#serving-static-files) * [SSL certificates](#ssl-certificates) * [LICENSE](#license) [![CircleCI](https://circleci.com/gh/maxking/docker-mailman/tree/master.svg?style=svg)](https://circleci.com/gh/maxking/docker-mailman/tree/master) This repository hosts code for two docker images `maxking/mailman-core` and `maxking/mailman-web` both of which are meant to deploy [GNU Mailman 3][1] in a production environment. [Docker][2] is a container ecosystem which can run containers on several platforms. It consists of a tool called [docker-compose][3] which can be used to run multi-container applications. This repository consists of a [`docker-compose.yaml`](docker-compose.yaml) file which is a set of configurations that can be used to deploy the [Mailman 3 Suite][4]. Please see [NEWS](NEWS.md) for the latest changes and releases. Release ======= The tags for the images are assumed to be release versions for images. This is going to be a somewhat common philosophy of distributing Container images where the images with same tags are usually updated with the new functionality. Releases will follow the following rules: * Images tagged like A.B.C will never change. If you want to pin down versions of Images, use these tags. * Images tagged with A.B will correspond to the latest A.B.C version released. Releases in A.B series are supposed to be backwards compatible, i.e., any existing installation should not break when upgrading between subversions of A.B.C. So, if you want the latest updates and want to frequently update your installation without having to change the version numbers, you can use this. * Any changes in the minor version of Mailman components of the images will cause a bump in the minor version, e.g., A.(B+1) will have one (and only one) updated Mailman component from A.B. Also, significant change in functionality, that might change how Images work or how people interact with the containers can also cause a bump in the minor version. * Major versions will change either when there are backwards incompatible changes or when the releases reach a certain set milestone or when there are bugfix releases for the internal components or both. Rolling Releases ================ Rolling releases are made up of Mailman Components installed from [git source](https://gitlab.com/mailman). **Note that these releases are made up of un-released software and should be assumed to be beta quality.** Every commit is tested with Mailman's CI infrastructure and is included in rolling releases only if they have passed the complete test suite. ``` $ docker pull quay.io/maxking/mailman-web:rolling $ docker pull quay.io/maxking/mailman-core:rolling ``` Rolling releases are built with every commit and also re-generated weekly. You can inspect the images to get which commit it was built using: ```bash $ docker inspect --format '{{json .Config.Labels }}' mailman-core | python -m json.tool { "version.core": "31f434d0", "version.git_commit": "45a4d7805b2b3d0e7c51679f59682d64ba02f05f", "version.mm3-hk": "c625bfd2" } $ docker inspect --format '{{json .Config.Labels }}' mailman-web | python -m json.tool { "version.client": "d9e9cb73", "version.dj-mm3": "72a7d6c4", "version.git_commit": "45a4d7805b2b3d0e7c51679f59682d64ba02f05f", "version.hyperkitty": "b67ca8a8", "version.postorius": "73328ad4" } ``` - `version.git_commit` : This is the commit hash of the Dockerfile in the [Github repo](https://github.com/maxking/docker-mailman) - `version.core`: The commit hash of Mailman Core - `version.mm3-hk`: The commit hash of Mailman3-hyperkitty plugin. - `version.client`: The commit hash of Mailman Client. - `version.hyperkitty`: The commit hash of Hyperkitty. - `version.postorius`: The commit hash of Postorius. - `version.dj-mm3`: The commit hash of Django-Mailman3 project. Security -------- All the releases are signed and can be verified using [Docker Content Trust][14]. To make sure that your docker client actually verifies these signatures, you can enable Docker's content trust by setting an environment variable `DOCKER_CONTENT_TRUST`. In bash/zsh you can try this: ```bash $ export DOCKER_CONTENT_TRUST=1 ``` Or, alternatively, you can do this on a per-command basis without setting the environment variable above. For example, when pulling an image: ```bash $ docker pull --disable-content-trust=false maxking/mailman-core:release ``` The above command will fail if the release tag doesn't exist or is not signed. Dependencies ============ - Docker - Docker-compose To run this you first need to download docker for whichever operating system you are using. You can find documentation about [how to install][5]. It is recommended to use these instead of the one from your package managers. After you have downloaded and installed docker, install docker-compose from [here][6]. Configuration ============= Most of the common configuration is handled through environment variables in the `docker-compose.yaml`. However, there is need for some extra configuration that interacts directly with the application. There are two configuration files on the host that interact directly with Mailman's settings. These files exist on the host running the containers and are imported at runtime in the containers. * `/opt/mailman/core/mailman-extra.cfg` : This is the configuration for Mailman Core and anything that you add here will be added to Core's configuration. You need to restart your mailman-core container for the changes in this file to take effect. * `/opt/mailman/web/settings_local.py` : This is the Django configuration that is imported by the [existing configuration](web/mailman-web/settings.py) provided by the mailman-web container. To change or override any settings in Django, you need to edit this file. Also, note that if you need any other files to be accessible from the host to inside the container, you can place them at certain directories which are mounted inside the containers. * `/opt/mailman/core` in host maps to `/opt/mailman/` in mailman-core container. * `/opt/mailman/web` in host maps to `/opt/mailman-web-data` in mailman-web container. ### Mailman-web These are the settings that you MUST change before deploying: - `SERVE_FROM_DOMAIN`: The domain name from which Django will be served. To be added to `ALLOWED_HOSTS` in django settings. Default value is not set. This also replaces Django's default `example.com` SITE and becomes the default SITE (with SITE_ID=1). - `HYPERKITTY_API_KEY`: Hyperkitty's API Key, should be set to the same value as set for the mailman-core. - `MAILMAN_ADMIN_USER`: The username for the admin user to be created by default. - `MAILMAN_ADMIN_EMAIL`: The email for the admin user to be created by default. - `SECRET_KEY`: Django's secret key, mainly used for signing cookies and others. Please note here that if you choose to create the admin user using the environment variables mentioned above (`MAILMAN_ADMIN_USER` & `MAILMAN_ADMIN_EMAIL`), no password is set for your admin account. To set a password, plese follow the "Forgot Password" link on the "Sign In" page. For more details on how to configure this image, please look at [Mailman-web's Readme](web/README.md) ### Mailman-Core These are the variables that you MUST change before deploying: - `HYPERKITTY_API_KEY`: Hyperkitty's API Key, should be set to the same value as set for the mailman-web. - `DATABASE_URL`: URL of the type `driver://user:password@hostname:port/databasename` for the django to use. If not set, the default is set to `sqlite:///opt/mailman-web-data/mailmanweb.db`. The standard docker-compose.yaml comes with it set to a postgres database. There is no need to change this if you are happy with PostgreSQL. - `DATABASE_TYPE`: Its value can be one of `sqlite`, `postgres` or `mysql` as these are the only three database types that Mailman 3 supports. Its default value is set to `sqlite` along with the default database class and default database url above. - `DATABASE_CLASS`: Default value is `mailman.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase`. The values for this can be found in the mailman's documentation [here][11]. For more details on how to configure this image, please look [Mailman-core's Readme](core/README.md) While the above configuration will allow you to run the images and possibly view the Web Frontend, it won't be functional until it is fully configured to to send emails. To configure the mailman-web container to send emails, see these [configuration settings][15]. To configure the mailman-core container to send emails, see the Setting your MTA section below. Running ======= To run the containers, simply run: ```bash $ mkdir -p /opt/mailman/core $ mkdir -p /opt/mailman/web $ git clone https://github.com/maxking/docker-mailman $ cd docker-mailman # Change some configuration variables as mentioned above. $ docker-compose up -d ``` Note that the web frontend in the mailman-web container is, by default, only configured to serve dynamic content. Anything static like stylesheets, etc., is expected to be served directly by the web server. The static content exists at `/opt/mailman/web/static` and should be _aliased_ to `/static/` in the web server configuration. See [the nginx configuration][17] as an example. This command will do several things, most importantly: - Run a wsgi server using [`uwsgi`][7] for the Mailman's Django-based web frontend listening on http://172.19.199.3:8000/. It will run 2 worker processes with 4 threads each. You may want to change the setting `ALLOWED_HOSTS` in the settings before deploying the application in production. - Run a PostgreSQL server with a default database, username, and password as mentioned in the `docker-compose.yaml`. You will have to change configuration files too if you change any of these. - Run mailman-core listening an LMTP server at http://172.19.199.2:8024/ for messages from your MTA. You will have to configure your MTA to send messages at this address. Some more details about what the above system achieves is mentioned below. If you are only going to deploy a simple configuration, you don't need to read this. However, these are very easy to understand if you know how docker works. - First create a bridge network called `mailman` in the `docker-compose.yaml`. It will probably be named something else in your machine, but it will use the `172.19.199.0/24` as subnet. All the containers mentioned (mailman-core, mailman-web, database) will join this network and are assigned static IPs. The host operating system is available at `172.19.199.1` from within these containers. - Spin off a mailman-core container which has a static IP address of `172.19.199.2` in the mailman bridge network created above. It has GNU Mailman 3 core running inside it. Mailman core's REST API is available at port 8001 and LMTP server listens at port 8024. - Spin off a mailman-web container which has a Django application running with both Mailman's web frontend Postorius and Mailman's web-based Archiver running. [Uwsgi][7] server is used to run a web server with the configuration provided in this repository [here](web/assets/settings.py). You may want to change the setting `ALLOWED_HOSTS` in the settings before deploying the application in production. You can do that by adding a `/opt/mailman/web/settings_local.py` which is imported by the Django when running. - Spin off a PostgreSQL database container which is used by both mailman-core and mailman-web as their primary database. - mailman-core mounts `/opt/mailman/core` from host OS at `/opt/mailman` in the container. Mailman's var directory is stored there so that it is accessible from the host operating system. Configuration for Mailman core is generated on every run from the environment variables provided. Extra configuration can also be provided at `/opt/mailman/core/mailman-extra.cfg` (on host), and will be added to generated configuration file. Mailman also needs another configuration file called [mailman-hyperkitty.cfg](core/assets/mailman-hyperkitty.cfg) and is also expected to be at `/opt/mailman/core/` on the host OS. - mailman-web mounts `/opt/mailman/web` from the host OS to `/opt/mailman-web-data` in the container. It consists of the logs and settings_local.py file for Django. - database mounts `/opt/mailman/database` at `/var/lib/postgresql/data` so that PostgreSQL can persist its data even if the database containers are updated/changed/removed. Setting up your MTA =================== The provided docker containers do not have an MTA in-built. You can either run your own MTA inside a container and have them relay emails to the mailman-core container or just install an MTA on the host and have them relay emails. To use [Exim4][8], it should be setup to relay emails from `172.19.199.3` and `172.19.199.2`. The mailman specific configuration is provided in the repository at `core/assets/exim`. There are three files - [25_mm_macros](core/assets/exim/25_mm3_macros) to be placed at `/etc/exim4/conf.d/main/25_mm3_macros` in a typical Debian install of exim4. Please change MY_DOMAIN_NAME to the domain name that will be used to serve mailman. Multi-domain setups will be added later. - [455_mm3_router](core/assets/exim/455_mm3_router) to be placed at `/etc/exim4/conf.d/router/455_mm3_router` in a typical Debian install of exim4. - [55_mm3_transport](core/assets/exim/55_mm3_transport) to be placed at `/etc/exim4/conf.d/transport/55_mm3_transport` in a typical Debian install of exim4. Also, the default configuration inside the mailman-core image has the MTA set to Exim, but just for reference, it looks like this: ``` # mailman.cfg [mta] incoming: mailman.mta.exim4.LMTP outgoing: mailman.mta.deliver.deliver lmtp_host: $MM_HOSTNAME lmtp_port: 8024 smtp_host: $SMTP_HOST smtp_port: $SMTP_PORT configuration: python:mailman.config.exim4 ``` To use [Postfix][12], it should be set up to relay emails from `172.19.199.2` and `172.19.199.3`. The mailman specific configuration is mentioned below which you should add to your `main.cf` configuration file, which is typically at `/etc/postfix/main.cf` on Debian-based operating systems: ``` # main.cf # Support the default VERP delimiter. recipient_delimiter = + unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 550 owner_request_special = no transport_maps = regexp:/opt/mailman/core/var/data/postfix_lmtp local_recipient_maps = regexp:/opt/mailman/core/var/data/postfix_lmtp relay_domains = regexp:/opt/mailman/core/var/data/postfix_domains ``` To configure Mailman to use Postfix, add the following to `mailman-extra.cfg` at `/opt/mailman/core/mailman-extra.cfg`. ``` # mailman-extra.cfg [mta] incoming: mailman.mta.postfix.LMTP outgoing: mailman.mta.deliver.deliver lmtp_host: 172.19.199.2 lmtp_port: 8024 smtp_host: 172.19.199.1 smtp_port: 25 configuration: /etc/postfix-mailman.cfg ``` The configuration file `/etc/postfix-mailman.cfg` is generated automatically. Setting up your web server ========================== It is advisable to run your Django (interfaced through WSGI server) through an _actual_ webserver in production for better performance. If you are using v0.1.0, the uwsgi server is configured to listen to requests at `172.19.199.3:8000` using the `HTTP` protocol. Make sure that you preserve the `HOST` header when you proxy the requests from your Web Server. In Nginx you can do that by adding the following to your configuration: ``` # Nginx configuration. location / { # First attempt to serve request as file, then proxy_pass http://172.19.199.3:8000; include uwsgi_params; uwsgi_read_timeout 300; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr; } ``` Make sure you are using `proxy_pass` for the `HTTP` protocol. uwsgi ----- Starting from v0.1.1, the uwsgi server is configured to listen to requests at `172.19.199.3:8000` with the http protocol and `172.19.199.3:8080` for the uwsgi protocol. **Please make sure that you are using port 8080 for uwsgi protocol.** It is advised to use the uwsgi protocol as it has better performance. Both Apache and Nginx have native support for the uwsgi protocol through plugins which are generally included in the distro packages. To move to uwsgi protocol in the above nginx configuration use this ``` # Nginx configuration. location / { # First attempt to serve request as file, then uwsgi_pass 172.19.199.3:8080; include uwsgi_params; uwsgi_read_timeout 300; } ``` Please make sure that you are using v0.1.1 or greater if you use this configuration. ### Serving static files UWSGI by default doesn't serve static files so, when running `mailman-web` using the provided `docker-compose.yaml` file, you won't see any CSS or JS files being served. To enable serving of static files using UWSGI, add the following environment variable to your `docker-compose.yaml` file under `mailman-web`: ``` UWSGI_STATIC_MAP=/static=/opt/mailman-web-data/static ``` It is recommended to use web-server to serve static files instead of UWSGI for better performance. You will have to add an alias rule in your web server to serve the static files. See [here][18] for instructions on how to configure your web server. The STATIC_ROOT for you would be `/opt/mailman/web/static`. ### SSL certificates SSL Certificates from Lets Encrypt need to be renewed every 90 days. You can setup a cron job to do the job. I have this small shell script (certbot-renew.sh) that you can put up in `/etc/cron.monthly` to get the job done. ``` #! /bin/bash cd /opt/letsencrypt/ ./certbot-auto --config /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/MY_DOMAIN_NAME.conf certonly if [ $? -ne 0 ] then ERRORLOG=`tail /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log` echo -e "The Let's Encrypt cert has not been renewed! \n \n" \ $ERRORLOG else nginx -s reload fi exit 0 ``` Please do not forget to make the script executable (chmod +x certbot-renew.sh). LICENSE ======= This repository is licensed under the MIT License. Please see the LICENSE file for more details. [1]: http://list.org [2]: https://www.docker.com/ [3]: https://docs.docker.com/compose/ [4]: http://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/ [5]: https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/ [6]: https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/ [7]: https://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ [8]: http://exim.org/ [9]: https://letsencrypt.org/ [10]: https://certbot.eff.org/ [11]: https://mailman.readthedocs.io/en/latest/src/mailman/docs/database.html [12]: http://www.postfix.org/ [13]: http://semver.org/ [14]: https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/trust/content_trust/ [15]: http://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/config-web.html#setting-up-email [17]: http://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/prodsetup.html#nginx-configuration [18]: http://docs.list.org/en/latest/pre-installation-guide.html#django-static-files