Activation emails: discourse-doctor works, discourse itself does not

Installation
1

Hi all,

Just as the title says. discourse-doctor will connect to my mailserver (running on the host machine) via its external and internet-facing interface (but not localhost), but discourse itself just will not.

No attempt by discourse is being logged, neither in the Rails production log nor my mailserver logs. I’ve even run a packet sniffer on the Docker interface and see no mail traffic.

discourse-doctor however does produce log entries on my mailserver, as expected, and I can read the email in my mail client.

I have rebuilt the Docker container several times with the following configuration:

## this is the all-in-one, standalone Discourse Docker container template
##
## After making changes to this file, you MUST rebuild
## /var/discourse/launcher rebuild app
##
## BE *VERY* CAREFUL WHEN EDITING!
## YAML FILES ARE SUPER SUPER SENSITIVE TO MISTAKES IN WHITESPACE OR ALIGNMENT!
## visit http://www.yamllint.com/ to validate this file as needed

templates:
  - "templates/postgres.template.yml"
  - "templates/redis.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.ratelimited.template.yml"
## Uncomment these two lines if you wish to add Lets Encrypt (https)
###   - "templates/web.ssl.template.yml"
###   - "templates/web.letsencrypt.ssl.template.yml"

## which TCP/IP ports should this container expose?
## If you want Discourse to share a port with another webserver like Apache or nginx,
## see https://meta.discourse.org/t/17247 for details
expose:
  - "127.0.0.1:1234:80"   # http
    ###   - "127.0.0.1:1235:443" # https

params:
  db_default_text_search_config: "pg_catalog.english"

  ## Set db_shared_buffers to a max of 25% of the total memory.
  ## will be set automatically by bootstrap based on detected RAM, or you can override
  db_shared_buffers: "256MB"

  ## can improve sorting performance, but adds memory usage per-connection
  #db_work_mem: "40MB"

  ## Which Git revision should this container use? (default: tests-passed)
  #version: tests-passed

env:
  LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  # DISCOURSE_DEFAULT_LOCALE: en

  ## How many concurrent web requests are supported? Depends on memory and CPU cores.
  ## will be set automatically by bootstrap based on detected CPUs, or you can override
  UNICORN_WORKERS: 4

  ## TODO: The domain name this Discourse instance will respond to
  ## Required. Discourse will not work with a bare IP number.
  DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME: example.com

  ## Uncomment if you want the container to be started with the same
  ## hostname (-h option) as specified above (default "$hostname-$config")
  #DOCKER_USE_HOSTNAME: true

  ## TODO: List of comma delimited emails that will be made admin and developer
  ## on initial signup example 'user1@example.com,user2@example.com'
  DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS: 'me@another.com'

  ## TODO: The SMTP mail server used to validate new accounts and send notifications
  # SMTP ADDRESS, username, and password are required
  # WARNING the char '#' in SMTP password can cause problems!
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_ADDRESS: submission.example.com # A record works but not CNAME
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT: 587
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER_NAME: somedumbuser
  DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD: somedumbpass
  #DISCOURSE_SMTP_ENABLE_START_TLS: true           # (optional, default true)

  ## If you added the Lets Encrypt template, uncomment below to get a free SSL certificate
  LETSENCRYPT_ACCOUNT_EMAIL: ssl@yetanother.com

  ## The http or https CDN address for this Discourse instance (configured to pull)
  ## see https://meta.discourse.org/t/14857 for details
  #DISCOURSE_CDN_URL: https://discourse-cdn.example.com

## The Docker container is stateless; all data is stored in /shared
volumes:
  - volume:
      host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone
      guest: /shared
  - volume:
      host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/var-log
      guest: /var/log

## Plugins go here
## see https://meta.discourse.org/t/19157 for details
hooks:
  after_code:
    - exec:
        cd: $home/plugins
        cmd:
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/docker_manager.git

## Any custom commands to run after building
run:
  - exec: echo "Beginning of custom commands"
  ## If you want to set the 'From' email address for your first registration, uncomment and change:
  ## After getting the first signup email, re-comment the line. It only needs to run once.
  #- exec: rails r "SiteSetting.notification_email='info@unconfigured.discourse.org'"
  - replace:
      filename: /etc/nginx/conf.d/discourse.conf
      from: "types {"
      to: |
        set_real_ip_from 0.0.0.0/0;
        real_ip_header X-Forwarded-For;
        real_ip_recursive on;
        types {
  - exec: echo "End of custom commands"
2

So running the mail test at /admin/email doesn’t send a message? Is /sidekiq running? Did you do a standard install?

Discourse needs a domain name to work, so your problem may be related to binding it only to localhost.

1 Like
3

Hi Jay, thanks for responding.

When I run sudo docker exec -it app /bin/bash, I don’t see an /admin directory. Nor do I see an /admin directory cloned from the git repo.

pgrep -afl sidekiq does show a process with that name running.

I am running Discourse behind HAProxy, as I described here, hence the binding to localhost: How to install Discourse behind Apache mod_proxy?

4

I have tried modifying expose as follows and there is still not so much as a SYN being sent to port 587 on my mailserver. DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME is set to the correct domain, sidekiq is running, and still no idea where to find /admin/email.

expose:
  - "1234:80"   # http
5

/admin/email is a relative path
You need to access it in a web browser:
{Your Discourse Hostname}/admin/email

1 Like