Postal: Build a new mail server

[JudgeAdil]

hello, i have an issue when building a mail server, installation went good on Ubuntu 18 server, hosted at Digitalocean, but after creating organization, i can't build a mail server, the green button just keeps showing that it's loading, but nothing happens. Thanks for your time

[kusobiz]

You can't use DO for postal because their port 25 is closed and they will not open.

[JudgeAdil]

I see, thank you for your answer, any company you suggest ?

[willpower232]

It may be worth asking digital ocean if they will allow you to send emails before changing providers.

Regarding your initial problem, it sounds like you are encountering a server problem so you should have a look at your logs to see what it is.

[JudgeAdil]

It may be worth asking digital ocean if they will allow you to send emails before changing providers.

Regarding your initial problem, it sounds like you are encountering a server problem so you should have a look at your logs to see what it is.

thanks for your answer, can you point me to the logs i should check ?

[willpower232]

They are in /opt/postal/log, for your error I think you'll need the rails one but I could be mistaken.

[Xando235]

Hi, I am having the same problem and I am locally hosting the server. My port 25 is open and smtp is listening on it, however, I am still unable to build a new mail server. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated as I am new to this.

[willpower232]

@Xando235 as per my previous message, you will need to look at your own log files to see what is going wrong

[Lyamc]

Just thought I'd chime in. I ran into the same issue, in my case the error was in /opt/postal/logs/rails.log

[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:34:02.640] INFO -- : Started POST "/org/example/servers" for 127.0.0.1 at 2020-11-26 00:34:02 -0800
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:34:02.641] INFO -- : Processing by ServersController#create as JSON
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:34:02.641] INFO -- :   Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "server"=>{"name"=>"Example Mail", "permalink"=>"", "mode"=>"Live"}, "commit"=>"Build server", "org_permalink"=>"example"}
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:34:02.659] INFO -- : Completed 500 Internal Server Error in 18ms (ActiveRecord: 8.8ms)
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:34:02.660] FATAL -- :
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:34:02.660] FATAL -- : Mysql2::Error::ConnectionError (Access denied for user 'postaluser'@'localhost' to database 'postal-server-3'):
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:34:02.660] FATAL -- :
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:34:02.660] FATAL -- : lib/postal/message_db/database.rb:319:in `query_on_connection'

I checked and my passwords in /opt/postal/config/postal.yml are correct, I have access to mysql with
mysql -u postaluser -p

Edit: It also fails when choosing development

lib/postal/message_db/database.rb:311:in `block in query'
lib/postal/message_db/mysql.rb:20:in `client'
lib/postal/message_db/database.rb:342:in `with_mysql'
lib/postal/message_db/database.rb:310:in `query'
lib/postal/message_db/provisioner.rb:46:in `drop'
lib/postal/message_db/provisioner.rb:13:in `provision'
app/models/server.rb:86:in `block in <class:Server>'
app/controllers/servers_controller.rb:36:in `create'
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:44.516] INFO -- : Started GET "/org/example/servers/new" for 127.0.0.1 at 2020-11-26 00:55:44 -0800
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:44.517] INFO -- : Processing by ServersController#new as HTML
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:44.517] INFO -- :   Parameters: {"org_permalink"=>"example"}
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:44.527] INFO -- :   Rendering servers/new.html.haml within layouts/application
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:44.528] INFO -- :   Rendered organizations/_nav.html.haml (0.7ms)
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:44.530] INFO -- :   Rendered servers/_form.html.haml (1.3ms)
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:44.530] INFO -- :   Rendered servers/new.html.haml within layouts/application (2.3ms)
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:44.531] INFO -- : Completed 200 OK in 15ms (Views: 4.0ms | ActiveRecord: 6.6ms)
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:50.410] INFO -- : Started POST "/org/example/servers" for 127.0.0.1 at 2020-11-26 00:55:50 -0800
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:50.411] INFO -- : Processing by ServersController#create as JSON
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:50.411] INFO -- :   Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "server"=>{"name"=>"TEST", "permalink"=>"", "mode"=>"Development"}, "commit"=>"Build server", "org_permalink"=>"example"}
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:50.427] INFO -- : Completed 500 Internal Server Error in 16ms (ActiveRecord: 8.7ms)
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:50.428] FATAL -- :
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:50.428] FATAL -- : Mysql2::Error::ConnectionError (Access denied for user 'postaluser'@'localhost' to database 'postal-server-5'):
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:50.428] FATAL -- :
[web.1:32242] [2020-11-26T00:55:50.428] FATAL -- : lib/postal/message_db/database.rb:319:in `query_on_connection'

Edit2: stupid root error

Nov 26 01:14:58 example-db mysqld[6749]: 2020-11-26  1:14:58 0 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld (mysqld 10.3.25-MariaDB-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) starting as process 6749 ...
Nov 26 01:14:58 example-db mysqld[6749]: 2020-11-26  1:14:58 0 [Warning] Could not increase number of max_open_files to more than 16384 (request: 32194)
Nov 26 01:14:58 example-db systemd[1]: Started MariaDB 10.3.25 database server.
Nov 26 01:14:58 example-db /etc/mysql/debian-start[6791]: Looking for 'mysql' as: /usr/bin/mysql
Nov 26 01:14:58 example-db /etc/mysql/debian-start[6791]: Looking for 'mysqlcheck' as: /usr/bin/mysqlcheck
Nov 26 01:14:58 example-db /etc/mysql/debian-start[6791]: Version check failed. Got the following error when calling the 'mysql' command line client
Nov 26 01:14:58 example-db /etc/mysql/debian-start[6791]: ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)
Nov 26 01:14:58 example-db /etc/mysql/debian-start[6791]: FATAL ERROR: Upgrade failed
Nov 26 01:14:58 example-db /etc/mysql/debian-start[6801]: Checking for insecure root accounts.
Nov 26 01:14:58 example-db debian-start[6804]: ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)

In the process of trying to fix this, the mysql/mariadb got borked. I'm doing a completely new install ☹️

[Lyamc]

I fixed the issue. First thing I did was fix the mysql issues.

Next I double-checked my postal config: there was an issue. I was following two tutorials, one had "postaluser" and one had "postal" so I had been using the wrong user for the database! 🤦

Anyways, once that was sorted out, I reinitialized postal and everything works!

[willpower232]

Glad you figured it out, which tutorial were you following? The quick install script should make all this easier to get going with rather than following individual steps

[Lyamc]

The quick install script is for Ubuntu 16.04, I'm running Ubuntu 20.04. I also had modified the tutorial a bit, but from what I can tell it's essentially the one provided here on github that someone modified a bit.

The biggest difference with the way I did it was that I didn't need to add any external repositories for the install. I did have to specify a particular version of something for a ruby package

I'm going to try modifying the current script to make it work on any standard 20.04 install and submitting it with a feature request for 20.04 support.

[Lyamc]

I'm still working on the script, but I found something interesting:

Both of the following work:

echo 'GRANT ALL ON `'$postaluser'`.* TO `'$postaluser'`@`127.0.0.1` IDENTIFIED BY "'$passgen'";' | sudo mysql -u root
echo 'GRANT ALL ON `'$postaluser'`.* TO `'$postaluser'`@`localhost` IDENTIFIED BY "'$passgen'";' | sudo mysql -u root

but logging in does not when using 127.0.0.1

$ mysql -u postal@localhost -p
Enter password:
ERROR 1698 (28000): Access denied for user 'postal@localhost'@'localhost'
$ mysql -u [email protected] -p
Enter password:
ERROR 1698 (28000): Access denied for user '[email protected]'@'localhost'
$ mysql -u postal -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 112
Server version: 10.3.25-MariaDB-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 Ubuntu 20.04

Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]>

I adjusted the commands:

$ mysql -u 'postal'@'127.0.0.1' -p
Enter password:
ERROR 1698 (28000): Access denied for user '[email protected]'@'localhost'

This is what caused my troubles! According to one tutorial I was supposed to use 127.0.0.1 while according to another I needed to use localhost which are not the same, and attempts to log in would fail because it adds localhost for some reason to everything.

[Lyamc]

Continued --> Feature: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS support #1265