History / Upgrading hMailServer

The wiki describes the tree after 6.3.3 as it lands on master: the settings store, the audit trail and alerts, what a domain does to a message, remote-domain policy, a backup that carries everything, and the rest of three batches Twenty-seven pages, each written from the code at 3233b0cc4 and then checked sentence by sentence against it by a second reader: 166 claims verified, 23 corrected before this commit. Everything the tree holds that no release has is labelled as in the tree after 6.3.3 and not yet released, and the next release is called that rather than given a number. The changes page carries the four schema steps 6042 to 6045 in section 2, the second and third batches in section 4e beside the first, the gate for 3233b0cc4 (2,410 tests, 2,402 passed, none failed, 8 skipped; the Linux figures are a placeholder until that run lands), and in section 5 the changes an upgrade makes with no switch - above all that the database is the settings store, that an edit to [Settings] in hMailServer.ini is undone at the next start and reported as HM5804, what to do instead, and that the password pepper stays in the file and out of every backup, so a restore onto new hardware needs it brought along. Fourteen pages that told a reader to edit the file now say how the same setting is changed once the store lands, and what an edit to the file does then; the settings reference says the table of INI keys is closed. The feature pages cover the backup that carries every per-account store, the audit trail and alerts with what each does not yet record or raise, syslog export, per-domain reports, remote-domain policy and mandatory TLS, SPF as RFC 7208, hmctl's configuration document, the tours, and the REST routes counted at the commit rather than guessed at. The checking found things the tree itself gets wrong, which are recorded for the next batch rather than papered over here: hmctl's configuration document has an empty ini section because it reads a route that answers names only; the packaged Linux ini's RestApiPort=0 is adopted into the store at first start, so the packaging README's edit-the-file way of turning the REST listener on no longer works; the OpenAPI text for the ini routes and the note the server writes into hMailServer.ini still describe the file as the store; and five repository documents say what their wiki copies said before this commit.

chrisholloway5 committed Sep 15, 2026

6.3.3, published 15 September 2026: the changes page's section 4d is the release now, with the stamped binary's gate, the timeline row and the picture carry it, the schema section runs to 6040 with the two steps of the release, the landing page's current release and schema rows move, the footer names it, and the live-update and CardDAV paragraphs on the upgrading and client pages lose their unreleased labels.

chrisholloway5 committed Sep 15, 2026

What is on master since 6.3.2 and in no release yet: a section on the changes page with the gate numbers of the batches that landed it, the live-update note on the upgrading page, CardDAV on the client page.

chrisholloway5 committed Sep 14, 2026

The wiki rewritten in depth: 141 diagrams drawn from the code, every reference page made exhaustive, and twenty-one defaults corrected that no page had ever stated The wiki was accurate after this morning's sweep and thin. This is the depth pass the owner asked for: every page read against the code again, every reference page completed, and a diagram wherever a diagram says it better than a paragraph. 141 Mermaid diagrams across 49 pages, each drawn from the handler rather than from memory: the SMTP submission sequence with the checks in the order ProtocolMAIL_ and ProtocolRCPT_ actually run them, the IMAP session state machine from the per-command authentication guards, the DMARC evaluation, the delivery pipeline and its retry arithmetic, the ACME renewal state machine, the spam decision from connection to delivery, the schema chain, the component and threading models of the whole server, the CI workflows and what each one gates, the release draft-sign-publish flow, and a map of the journeys through the wiki itself on the landing page. The reference pages are now exhaustive rather than representative: every route with its method, authentication, request and response shape and its error codes; every [Settings] key with its default, its effect and whether it needs a restart; every port with the key that opens it; every rule criterion and action; every Sieve extension the server advertises; every metric the listener exposes. Twenty-one facts were wrong or absent, and each is corrected against the code rather than adjusted. The ones that will save somebody an afternoon: IMAP SASL PLAIN and SCRAM are not advertised on a default install, which looks exactly like a client bug; SMTP AUTH PLAIN is off by default too; DMARC checking is on while SPF and DKIM as scored tests are off, and the DMARC test evaluates both itself regardless; the seeded DNSBL and SURBL servers are inactive; a new mailbox contains INBOX and nothing else, which is the real cause of the classic missing Sent folder; MTA-STS hosting and autoconfiguration default on while both web-service ports default to 0, so the shipped default is features on with nothing listening; and TLS-RPT and DMARC report sending are inert until their From address is set, with each completed day discarded unsent. Eleven screenshots are named as wanted, with what each should show. The existing images are from a 6.2.10-era build and the pages say so where it matters.

chrisholloway5 committed Sep 8, 2026

Every page read against the tree on 8 September 2026: the release and schema stamps (6.2.27, schema 6031, 2,124 tests), the routes, keys and pages that were missing, the listener paragraphs that were false, and the unreleased work labelled as such An audit of all 51 pages against master produced about 360 findings on 43 of them, applied here. The largest: the APIs reference lacked 47 routes and described the listeners as single-threaded HTTP/1.0 (they run on the Boost.Asio HTTP/1.1 server); the settings reference lacked the fourteen Update* keys and IMAPCompressionEnabled and counted 195 keys instead of 236; every "current release" stamp said 6.2.24; Changes Since 6.2.10 ended three releases and one schema step early; Architecture said the optional listeners were deliberately not Boost.Asio and built their own SSL contexts (neither is true); the upgrading pages still warned of a silent-upgrade hang fixed in 6.2.23; the Control Panel pages knew nothing of the seventeen languages, the Updates card or the stalled-mail page; and two pages did not render (a header inside a code block, CR and TAB bytes in file names). Anything in the tree but not in v6.2.27 - the live update, the self-service portal and /api/v1/me, the HttpServer listeners, IMAP COMPRESS=DEFLATE, the seventeen-language Control Panel, the Control Deck views - is documented and marked "in the tree after 6.2.27, not yet released". The Control Panel screenshots are still from a 6.2.10 build and the pages now say so.

chrisholloway5 committed Sep 8, 2026

The hMailServer 6.2.24 wiki: the corrected manual, the runbooks, and the references generated from the code

chrisholloway5 committed Sep 4, 2026