Email from timlegge/docker-foswiki

Hi, I spent a day to get outgoing mail working from a container started from timlegge/docker-foswiki.

Docker is great to experiment with and it is easy to start with a clean slate. Considering all the rabbit holes I went down, I thought it would be useful to document a working solution.

The starting point is an out-of-the-box running container:

sudo docker run --name foswiki -idt -p 8001:80 timlegge/docker-foswiki

Set the admin password with:

sudo docker exec -it foswiki sh -c "cd /var/www/foswiki; \
               tools/configure -save -set {Password}='insecure';

Change the password when you enter =configure=

In configure select Mail>{WebMasterEmail}>Autoconfigure. I get the following message:

Attempting to configure a mailer program
Unable to locate a known external mail program, trying sendmail
Unable to identify /usr/bin/busybox.
Mail configuration failed. Foswiki will not be able to send mail.

Point 3 is correct /usr/bin/busybox does not exist. Busybox is in /bin. Fixed with:

sudo docker exec -it foswiki ln -s /bin/busybox /usr/bin/busybox

To get the mail to work, you need to set the following configuration variables:

sudo docker exec -it foswiki sh -c "cd /var/www/foswiki; \
   tools/configure -save -set {WebMasterName}='YOUR_NAME'; \
   tools/configure -save -set {WebMasterEmail}='YOUR_EMAIL'; \
   tools/configure -save -set {Email}{MailMethod}='MailProgram'; \
   tools/configure -save -set {MailProgram}='/usr/sbin/sendmail -S YOUR_SMTP -t -oi -oeq -f YOUR_EMAIL'; \
   tools/configure -save -set {EnableEmail}='1' "

Don't bother with Autoconfigure. With this configuration Send Test Email works.

Notes:

YOUR_NAME is your regular name. Example: Bram van Oosterhout.
YOUR_EMAIL is your regular email address. Example [email protected]
YOUR_SMTP is the SMTP server of your ISP. Example: mail.google.com

A bit of gore about the {MailProgram}

-f YOUR_EMAIL' is required, because without it, the sender of the mail is root@... sendmail croaks with:

sendmail: recv:'553 #5.1.8 Domain of sender address <root@25d86b63c02c> does not exist'
sendmail: MAIL FROM:<root@25d86b63c02c> failed

-S YOUR_SMTP is required. sendmail works fine when the environment variable SMTPHOST is set. But that variable is not available to Foswiki in Net.pm. I tried adding SMTPHOST in Security and Authentication > Environment > {AccessibleENV} but to no avail.

-- BramVanOosterhout - 06 Oct 2022

Why did you not just continue the related question you had already posted at Question2130? Perhaps you could reference this one there and close that one out.

-- LynnwoodBrown - 06 Oct 2022

Hi Lynwood,

Hard to believe, but I could not find it. I scanned the Asked page and searched for "legge" and it did not turn up. So I thought I forgot to save it when I closed the browser.

Anyway, there it is Question2129. I'll close that one with a reference to this one.

Thanks for the pointer.

-- BramVanOosterhout - 06 Oct 2022