James stands for Java Apache Mail Enterprise Server!
It has a modular architecture based on a rich set of modern and efficient components which provides at the end complete, stable, secure and extendable Mail Servers running on the JVM.
Create your own personal solution for emails treatment by assembling the components you need thanks to the Inversion of Control mail platform offered and go further customizing filtering and routing rules using James Mailet Container.
Supported protocols are: IMAP, SMTP, JMAP, POP3 and more…
Read more on our website.
James is a project that lives from the contributions of its community! Anyone can contribute!
Read the contributing guidelines.
We more than welcome articles and blog posts about James. Contact us by email or on Gitter to share your experiences.
Documentation is an easy way to get started, and more than wanted! Check out the ~documentation label on JIRA.
And to get started with code contributions, search out the ~newbie, ~easyfix, ~feature labels on JIRA.
There is many other ways one can help us: packaging, communication, etc …
Requirements: docker & docker-compose installed.
When you try James this way, you will use the most current state of James. It will be configured to run with Cassandra & ElasticSearch. All those three components will be started with a single command.
You can retrieve the docker-compose file :
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apache/james-project/master/dockerfiles/run/docker-compose.yml
Then, you just have to start the services:
$ docker-compose up
Wait a few seconds in order to have all those services start up. You will see the following log when James is available: james | Started : true
A default domain, james.local, has been created. You can see this by running:
$ docker exec james java -jar /root/james-cli.jar -h 127.0.0.1 -p 9999 listdomains
James will respond to IMAP port 143 and SMTP port 25. You have to create users before playing with james. You may also want to create other domains. Follow the Useful commands section for more information about James CLI.
In order to have a standard compilation environment, we introduce Dockerfiles, using java-11.
First step, you have to build the Docker image
$ docker build -t james/project dockerfiles/compilation/java-11
In order to run the build, you have to launch the following command:
$ docker run -v $PWD/.m2:/root/.m2 -v $PWD:/origin -t james/project -s SHA1
Where:
-
$PWD/.m2:/root/.m2: is the first volume used to share the maven repository, as we don’t want to download all dependencies on each build
-
SHA1 (optional): is the given git SHA1 of the james-project repository to build or master if none.
-
-s option: given tests will not be played while building. Not specifying means play tests.
To retrieve compiled artifacts, one might mount these volumes:
-
--volume $PWD/dockerfiles/run/spring/destination:/spring/destination : is the volume used to get the compiled elements for Spring packaging.
-
--volume $PWD/dockerfiles/run/guice/cassandra/destination:/cassandra/destination : is the volume used to get the compiled elements for Guice Cassandra packaging and Cassandra-LDAP packaging.
-
--volume $PWD/dockerfiles/run/guice/cassandra/destination:/jpa/destination : is the volume used to get the compiled elements for Guice JPA packaging.
-
--volume $PWD/swagger:/swagger : is the volume used to get the swagger json files for webadmin documentation.
Some tests needs a DOCKER_HOST environment variable in order to be played, they will be ignored if you don’t provide this variable. If you wish to play them, you may use a command like the following (depending on your docker configuration):
$ docker run --env DOCKER_HOST=tcp://172.17.0.1:2376 -v $PWD/.m2:/root/.m2 -v $PWD:/origin -v $PWD/dockerfiles/run/spring/destination:/destination -t james/project SHA1
If you are using a a fresh installation of Docker, your DOCKER_HOST should be unix:///var/run/docker.sock and you should mount this socket as a volume:
$ docker run --env DOCKER_HOST=unix:///var/run/docker.sock -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v $PWD/.m2:/root/.m2 -v $PWD:/origin -v $PWD/dockerfiles/run/spring/destination:/destination -t james/project SHA1
This feature is available for three configurations :
Built artifacts should be in ./dockerfiles/run/guice/cassandra-rabbitmq/destination folder for cassandra. If you haven’t already:
$ docker build -t james/project dockerfiles/compilation/java-11 $ docker run -v $HOME/.m2:/root/.m2 -v $PWD:/origin \ -v $PWD/dockerfiles/run/guice/cassandra-rabbitmq/destination:/cassandra-rabbitmq/destination \ -t james/project -s HEAD
You need a running cassandra in docker. To achieve this run:
$ docker run -d --name=cassandra cassandra:3.11.3
You need a running rabbitmq in docker. To achieve this run:
$ docker run -d --name=rabbitmq rabbitmq:3.8.1-management
You need a running s3 compatible objectstorage in docker. To achieve this run:
$ docker run -d --env 'REMOTE_MANAGEMENT_DISABLE=1' --env 'SCALITY_ACCESS_KEY_ID=accessKey1' --env 'SCALITY_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=secretKey1' --name=s3 zenko/cloudserver:8.2.6
You need a running ElasticSearch in docker. To achieve this run:
$ docker run -d --name=elasticsearch --env 'discovery.type=single-node' docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:6.3.2
If you want to handle attachment text extraction before indexing in ElasticSearch (this makes attachments searchable) and if you want to use all the JMAP search capabilities, you also need to start Tika. See Tika configuration documentation for more info.
$ docker run -d --name=tika apache/tika:1.24
We need to provide the key we will use for TLS. For obvious reasons, this is not provided in this git.
Copy your TLS keys to run/guice/cassandra-rabbitmq/destination/conf/keystore or generate it using the following command. The password must be james72laBalle to match default configuration.
$ keytool -genkey -alias james -keyalg RSA -keystore dockerfiles/run/guice/cassandra-rabbitmq/destination/conf/keystore
Then we need to build james container :
$ docker build -t james_run dockerfiles/run/guice/cassandra-rabbitmq
To run this container :
$ docker run --hostname HOSTNAME -p "25:25" -p 80:80 -p "110:110" -p "143:143" -p "465:465" -p "587:587" -p "993:993" -p "127.0.0.1:8000:8000" --link cassandra:cassandra --link rabbitmq:rabbitmq --link elasticsearch:elasticsearch --link tika:tika --link s3:s3.docker.test --name james_run -t james_run
Where :
-
HOSTNAME is the hostname you want to give to your James container. This DNS entry will be used to send mail to your James server.
-
link to tika is only needed if you started tika earlier.
Webadmin port binding is restricted to loopback as users are not authenticated by default on webadmin server. Thus you should avoid exposing it in production.
Note that the above example assumes 127.0.0.1 is your loopback interface for convenience but you should change it if this is not the case on your machine.
If you want to pass additional options to the underlying java command, you can configure a JVM_OPTIONS env variable, for example add:
--env JVM_OPTIONS="-Xms256m -Xmx2048m"
To have log file accessible on a volume, add -v $PWD/logs:/logs option to the above command line, where $PWD/logs is your local directory to put files in.
You can use Glowroot to instrumentalize James. The provided guice docker files allow a simple way to do it. In order to activate Glowroot you need to run the container with the environment variable GLOWROOT_ACTIVATED set to true and to expose the glowroot instrumentation ui port.
--env GLOWROOT_ACTIVATED=true -p "4000:4000"
By default, the Glowroot UI is accessible from every machines in the network as defined in the destination/admin.json. Which you could configure before building the image, if you want to restrict its accessibility to localhost for example. See the Glowroot post installation steps for more details.
Or by mapping the 4000 port to the IP of the desired network interface, for example -p 127.0.0.1:4000:4000.
Built artifacts should be in ./dockerfiles/run/guice/cassandra/destination folder for cassandra. If you haven’t already:
$ docker build -t james/project dockerfiles/compilation/java-11 $ docker run -v $HOME/.m2:/root/.m2 -v $PWD:/origin \ -v $PWD/dockerfiles/run/guice/cassandra/destination:/cassandra/destination \ -t james/project -s HEAD
You need a running cassandra in docker. To achieve this run:
$ docker run -d --name=cassandra cassandra:3.11.3
You need a running ElasticSearch in docker. To achieve this run:
$ docker run -d --name=elasticsearch --env 'discovery.type=single-node' docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:6.3.2
If you want to handle attachment text extraction before indexing in ElasticSearch (this makes attachments searchable) and if you want to use all the JMAP search capabilities, you also need to start Tika. See Tika configuration documentation for more info.
$ docker run -d --name=tika apache/tika:1.24
We need to provide the key we will use for TLS. For obvious reasons, this is not provided in this git.
Copy your TLS keys to run/guice/cassandra/destination/conf/keystore or generate it using the following command. The password must be james72laBalle to match default configuration.
$ keytool -genkey -alias james -keyalg RSA -keystore dockerfiles/run/guice/cassandra/destination/conf/keystore
Then we need to build james container :
$ docker build -t james_run dockerfiles/run/guice/cassandra
To run this container :
$ docker run --hostname HOSTNAME -p "25:25" -p 80:80 -p "110:110" -p "143:143" -p "465:465" -p "587:587" -p "993:993" -p "127.0.0.1:8000:8000" --link cassandra:cassandra --link elasticsearch:elasticsearch --link tika:tika --name james_run -t james_run
Where :
-
HOSTNAME is the hostname you want to give to your James container. This DNS entry will be used to send mail to your James server.
-
link to tika is only needed if you started tika earlier.
Webadmin port binding is restricted to loopback as users are not authenticated by default on webadmin server. Thus you should avoid exposing it in production.
Note that the above example assumes 127.0.0.1 is your loopback interface for convenience but you should change it if this is not the case on your machine.
To have log file accessible on a volume, add -v $PWD/logs:/logs option to the above command line, where $PWD/logs is your local directory to put files in.
Built artifacts should be in ./dockerfiles/run/guice/jpa/destination folder for jpa. If you haven’t already:
$ docker build -t james/project dockerfiles/compilation/java-11 $ docker run -v $HOME/.m2:/root/.m2 -v $PWD:/origin \ -v $PWD/dockerfiles/run/guice/jpa/destination:/jpa/destination \ -t james/project -s HEAD
We need to provide the key we will use for TLS. For obvious reasons, this is not provided in this git.
Copy your TLS keys to run/guice/jpa/destination/conf/keystore or generate it using the following command. The password must be james72laBalle to match default configuration.
$ keytool -genkey -alias james -keyalg RSA -keystore dockerfiles/run/guice/jpa/destination/conf/keystore
Then we need to build james container :
$ docker build -t james_run dockerfiles/run/guice/jpa
To run this container :
$ docker run --hostname HOSTNAME -p "25:25" -p 80:80 -p "110:110" -p "143:143" -p "465:465" -p "587:587" -p "993:993" -p "127.0.0.1:8000:8000" --name james_run -t james_run
HOSTNAME is the hostname you want to give to your James container. This DNS entry will be used to send mail to your James server.
Webadmin port binding is restricted to loopback as users are not authenticated by default on webadmin server. Thus you should avoid exposing it in production.
Note that the above example assumes 127.0.0.1 is your loopback interface for convenience but you should change it if this is not the case on your machine.
To have log file accessible on a volume, add -v $PWD/logs:/logs option to the above command line, where $PWD/logs is your local directory to put files in.
Built artifacts should be in ./dockerfiles/run/spring/destination folder for Spring. If you haven’t already:
$ docker build -t james/project dockerfiles/compilation/java-11 $ docker run -v $HOME/.m2:/root/.m2 -v $PWD:/origin \ -v $PWD/dockerfiles/run/spring/destination:/spring/destination \ -t james/project -s HEAD
We need to provide the key we will use for TLS. For obvious reasons, this is not provided in this git.
Copy your TSL keys to destination/run/spring/conf/keystore or generate it using the following command. The password must be james72laBalle to match default configuration.
$ keytool -genkey -alias james -keyalg RSA -keystore dockerfiles/run/spring/destination/conf/keystore
Then we need to build james container :
$ docker build -t james_run dockerfiles/run/spring/
The provisioned james images bases on pre-build james server which is "linagora/james-project-spring-jpa". If we need to build james container with the default initial data (initial domain: james.local and initial users: user01, user02, user03):
$ docker build -t james_run dockerfiles/run/spring/provisioned/
To run this container :
$ docker run --hostname HOSTNAME -p "25:25" -p "110:110" -p "143:143" -p "465:465" -p "587:587" -p "993:993" --name james_run -t james_run
Where HOSTNAME is the hostname you want to give to your James container. This DNS entry will be used to send mail to your James server.
The base command is different whether you choose guice flavor or spring :
-
guice use :
docker exec james_run java -jar /root/james-cli.jar -
spring use :
docker exec james_run /root/james-server-app-3.0.0-beta6-SNAPSHOT/bin/james-cli.sh
# Add DOMAIN to 127.0.0.1 in your host /etc/hosts $ <your-command-here> -h 127.0.0.1 -p 9999 adddomain DOMAIN
DOMAIN: is the domain you want to add.
Note: Using docker, one can add an environment variable holding the domain to be created. This domain will be created upon James start:
$ --environment DOMAIN=domain.tld
$ <your-command-here> -h 127.0.0.1 -p 9999 adduser USER_MAIL_ADDRESS PASSWORD
Where :
-
USER_MAIL_ADDRESS: is the mail address that will be used by this user.
-
PASSWORD: is the password that will be used by this user.
You can then just add DOMAIN to your /etc/hosts and you can connect to your james account with for instance Thunderbird.
Each user can manage his SIEVE scripts through the manage SIEVE mailet.
To use the manage SIEVE mailet :
-
You need to create the user sievemanager@DOMAIN ( if you don’t, the SMTP server will check the domain, recognize it, and look for an absent local user, and will generate an error ).
-
You can send Manage Sieve commands by mail to sievemanager@DOMAIN. Your subject must contain the command. Scripts needs to be added as attachments and need the ".sieve" extension.
To activate a script for a user, you need the following combination :
-
PUTSCRIPT scriptname
-
SETACTIVE scriptname
Some james data (those non related to mailbox, eg : mail queue, domains, users, rrt, SIEVE scripts, mail repositories ) are not yet supported by our Cassandra implementation.
To keep these data when you run a new container, you can mount the following volume :
-v /root/james-server-app-3.0.0-beta6-SNAPSHOT/var:WORKDIR/destination/var
Where :
-
WORKDIR: is the absolute path to your james-parent workdir.
Beware : you will have concurrency issues if multiple containers are running on this single volume.
James requires at least JDK 11 and Maven 3.6.0 to build. Some parts of James are written in Scala so one might need to enable Scala plugin in IDE.
We wrote some MPT (James' Mail Protocols Tests subproject) deployment tests to validate a James deployment.
It uses the External-James module, that uses environment variables to locate a remote IMAP server and run integration tests against it.
For that, the target James Server needs to be configured with a domain domain and a user imapuser with password password. Read above documentation to see how you can do this.
You have to run MPT tests inside docker. As you need to use maven, the simplest option is to use james/parent image, and override the entry point ( as git and maven are already configured there ) :
$ docker run -t --entrypoint="/root/integration_tests.sh" -v $PWD/.m2:/root/.m2 -v $PWD:/origin james/project JAMES_IP JAMES_PORT SHA1
Where :
-
JAMES_IP: IP address or DNS entry for your James server
-
JAMES_PORT: Port allocated to James' IMAP port (should be 143).
-
SHA1(optional): Branch to use in order to build integration tests or master if none.
First step, you have to build the Docker image
$ docker build -t james/merge dockerfiles/merge
In order to run the build, you have to launch the following command:
$ docker run -v $PWD:/origin -t james/merge SHA1 RESULTING_BRANCH
Where :
-
SHA1: is the given git SHA1 of the james-project repository to merge.
-
RESULTING_BRANCH: is the branch created when merging.
You can generate a deb package and an RPM package for James by using the following process.
First step, you have to build the Docker image used to generate the package
$ docker build -t build-james-packages \
--build-arg RELEASE=3.2.0 \
--build-arg ITERATION=1 \
--build-arg BASE=linagora/james-project \
--build-arg BASE_LDAP=linagora/james-ldap-project \
--build-arg BASE_RABBITMQ=linagora/james-rabbitmq-project \
--build-arg TAG=latest \
dockerfiles/packaging/guice/cassandra
Where:
-
ITERATION is the release number used after the last hyphen (e.g. 3.0.1, 3.1.0, 3.2.0…)
-
BASE is the image jar and executable are copied from. Defaults to linagora/james-project
-
BASE_LDAP is the image jar and executable are copied from for a deployment with an LDAP user repository. Defaults to linagora/james-ldap-project
-
BASE_RABBITMQ is the image jar and executable are copied from for a deployment of linagora/james-project + RabbitMQ + S3 BlobStore. Defaults to linagora/james-rabbitmq-project
-
TAG is the tag of these docker images. Defaults to latest.
Then, you have to run the container:
$ docker run --name james-packages -v $PWD/result:/result build-james-packages
Where:
-
$PWD/result is the folder where the deb and the RPM packages will be copied
Note: A helper script is provided for the generation of packages for a specific git commit. For instance:
$ sh dockerfiles/packaging/guice/cassandra/package.sh 3.2.0 1 c298195e84 $PWD/result
The generated package allow you to choose between a deployment with or without LDAP using update-alternatives. Once installed, try:
$ update-alternatives --config james
By default James is configured without LDAP support.
James comes with a Documentation and Architectural Decision Records.