it's the responsibility of the sender to use unique fromid's.
we do check if that's the case, and return an error if not.
also make it more clear that "unique smtp mail from addresses" map to the
"FromIDLoginAddresses" account config field.
based on feedback from cuu508 for #31, thanks!
the members must currently all be addresses of local accounts.
a message sent to an alias is accepted if at least one of the members accepts
it. if no members accepts it (e.g. due to bad reputation of sender), the
message is rejected.
if a message is submitted to both an alias addresses and to recipients that are
members of the alias in an smtp transaction, the message will be delivered to
such members only once. the same applies if the address in the message
from-header is the address of a member: that member won't receive the message
(they sent it). this prevents duplicate messages.
aliases have three configuration options:
- PostPublic: whether anyone can send through the alias, or only members.
members-only lists can be useful inside organizations for internal
communication. public lists can be useful for support addresses.
- ListMembers: whether members can see the addresses of other members. this can
be seen in the account web interface. in the future, we could export this in
other ways, so clients can expand the list.
- AllowMsgFrom: whether messages can be sent through the alias with the alias
address used in the message from-header. the webmail knows it can use that
address, and will use it as from-address when replying to a message sent to
that address.
ideas for the future:
- allow external addresses as members. still with some restrictions, such as
requiring a valid dkim-signature so delivery has a chance to succeed. will
also need configuration of an admin that can receive any bounces.
- allow specifying specific members who can sent through the list (instead of
all members).
for github issue #57 by hmfaysal.
also relevant for #99 by naturalethic.
thanks to damir & marin from sartura for discussing requirements/features.
for applications to compose/send messages, receive delivery feedback, and
maintain suppression lists.
this is an alternative to applications using a library to compose messages,
submitting those messages using smtp, and monitoring a mailbox with imap for
DSNs, which can be processed into the equivalent of suppression lists. but you
need to know about all these standards/protocols and find libraries. by using
the webapi & webhooks, you just need a http & json library.
unfortunately, there is no standard for these kinds of api, so mox has made up
yet another one...
matching incoming DSNs about deliveries to original outgoing messages requires
keeping history of "retired" messages (delivered from the queue, either
successfully or failed). this can be enabled per account. history is also
useful for debugging deliveries. we now also keep history of each delivery
attempt, accessible while still in the queue, and kept when a message is
retired. the queue webadmin pages now also have pagination, to show potentially
large history.
a queue of webhook calls is now managed too. failures are retried similar to
message deliveries. webhooks can also be saved to the retired list after
completing. also configurable per account.
messages can be sent with a "unique smtp mail from" address. this can only be
used if the domain is configured with a localpart catchall separator such as
"+". when enabled, a queued message gets assigned a random "fromid", which is
added after the separator when sending. when DSNs are returned, they can be
related to previously sent messages based on this fromid. in the future, we can
implement matching on the "envid" used in the smtp dsn extension, or on the
"message-id" of the message. using a fromid can be triggered by authenticating
with a login email address that is configured as enabling fromid.
suppression lists are automatically managed per account. if a delivery attempt
results in certain smtp errors, the destination address is added to the
suppression list. future messages queued for that recipient will immediately
fail without a delivery attempt. suppression lists protect your mail server
reputation.
submitted messages can carry "extra" data through the queue and webhooks for
outgoing deliveries. through webapi as a json object, through smtp submission
as message headers of the form "x-mox-extra-<key>: value".
to make it easy to test webapi/webhooks locally, the "localserve" mode actually
puts messages in the queue. when it's time to deliver, it still won't do a full
delivery attempt, but just delivers to the sender account. unless the recipient
address has a special form, simulating a failure to deliver.
admins now have more control over the queue. "hold rules" can be added to mark
newly queued messages as "on hold", pausing delivery. rules can be about
certain sender or recipient domains/addresses, or apply to all messages pausing
the entire queue. also useful for (local) testing.
new config options have been introduced. they are editable through the admin
and/or account web interfaces.
the webapi http endpoints are enabled for newly generated configs with the
quickstart, and in localserve. existing configurations must explicitly enable
the webapi in mox.conf.
gopherwatch.org was created to dogfood this code. it initially used just the
compose/smtpclient/imapclient mox packages to send messages and process
delivery feedback. it will get a config option to use the mox webapi/webhooks
instead. the gopherwatch code to use webapi/webhook is smaller and simpler, and
developing that shaped development of the mox webapi/webhooks.
for issue #31 by cuu508
so you can still know when someone has put you on their blocklist (which may
affect delivery), without using them.
also query dnsbls for our ips more often when we do more outgoing connections
for delivery: once every 100 messages, but at least 5 mins and at most 3 hours
since the previous check.
most content is in markdown files in website/, some is taken out of the repo
README and rfc/index.txt. a Go file generates html. static files are kept in a
separate repo due to size.
