INBUXA's webmail built its own source into every image: the whole tree,
web and server, packed as dist/source.tar.gz with an identity string
beside the link naming the exact tree it came from. The sign-in page and
Settings > About offered that download.
It answered the AGPL precisely -- the source of *this* build, uncommitted
work and all -- but it paid for that precision by carrying 2.5 MB of
source into production on every deploy, to a repository that is public
and already has it. The fork is at github.com/inbuxa/ihasmail-inbuxa;
the version shown directly above the link already names the commit the
build came from, so the link and the version together say the same
thing the archive said.
Both links now go there, through the mechanism upstream ihasmail already
has and this fork had replaced: the server's SOURCE_URL, read from
/api/config on the sign-in page and from the session in About, with
web/src/lib/source.ts as the fallback before either answers. That
mechanism is better than a hardcoded URL for the deployer who patches
this tree -- they set SOURCE_URL and both links follow -- which is the
case the AGPL is actually about. The defaults in config.ts, the compose
file and .env.example move from the upstream repo to this one, since a
build from this tree is a modified ihasmail and its offer is ours.
Removed with it: scripts/source-archive.mjs and its type stub, the Vite
plugin that ran it, __SOURCE_ID__, and SOURCE_ARCHIVE/SOURCE_ID. The
build no longer shells out to git or tar, and nothing is written next
to the app.
Links to Coffey-Labs/ihasmail that are credit rather than a source
offer -- the README's "built on", the translation issue link -- are
left alone.
No new strings: "AGPL-3.0 source" is unchanged, and the About line keeps
its existing {source} placeholder, now filled with the host and path
instead of a file name.
Every build writes the exact source it was built from, uncommitted work and
new files included, as source.tar.gz next to the app, named after that tree.
Docker builds, which have no git, pack the build context and name it by a
hash of its files. The sign-in page and Settings > About link to it instead of
a repository that can drift.
What users, operators and packagers see no longer names the upstream server:
- interface text, in all nine catalogues, with a token-session line for
Security;
- server messages;
- the settings, now MAIL_SERVER_URL, MAIL_SERVERS_FILE, ADMIN_URL and
MAIL_SERVER_FOLLOW_ADVERTISED_URLS, and mail-servers.example.json;
- the Tenants notice, which is gone;
- the README, CONTRIBUTING and SECURITY.
ihasmail's own FEATURES, KNOWN-ISSUES and ROADMAP stay with public ihasmail,
and INBUXA.md is folded into the README.
Cap JSON bodies at 64 KB on every API route except JMAP and uploads, which
bound themselves. Sign-in used to read a body of any size before its rate
limits ran; the flood ceiling now also runs before the body is read.
For sessions whose JMAP requests are checked, lower the read cap from 16 MB
to 4 MB, allow four such reads per session at once, and turn requests away
with a 503 once 32 MB is held across everyone.
Count sign-in limits per /64 for IPv6, since one host holds a whole /64.
Bind the compose example to loopback, and run it read-only with no
capabilities and no-new-privileges. Keep .env.* out of git and the image
build context.
`BASE_PATH=/mail` mounts the whole app under a prefix, for a host that is not
ihasmail's alone. Unset -- every deployment that exists -- is the domain root
and is byte-for-byte what it was: the canonical form of the setting is the
empty string, and `""` concatenated onto `/api/health` is `/api/health`.
That choice of canonical form is the whole design. A trailing slash would have
been the obvious alternative, and it fails quietly in exactly one place: at the
root it makes `//api/health`, which is not a path on this host but a
protocol-relative URL to a host called `api`. One call site forgetting to
branch is a request leaving the origin. So the empty string, one leading slash,
no trailing one, worked out once in `scripts/basePath.mjs` -- plain JS, next to
`version.mjs`, because the web build and the server both have to reach the same
answer and two implementations of "what does /mail/ mean" is precisely the bug
where the server serves an app whose script tags point somewhere else.
`/mail`, `mail`, `/mail/` and `//mail//` all mean the same mount; a deployment
should not fail over a trailing slash.
Unlike everything else ihasmail is told, this one cannot wait for the process
to start. The bundle writes its own asset URLs into index.html, so `BASE_PATH`
is read at build time for Vite's `base` as well as at run time for the routes,
and the Dockerfile carries one value into both. Get them out of step and the
page comes up blank with a 404 in a console nobody has open -- so the static
handler, which is reading index.html anyway, checks what it asks for and says
so in the log once per build.
Everything moves together. The API mounts at `${base}/api`; the router is
given the base once, so every `<Route path>` and `<Link href>` stays written
root-absolute and wouter does the rest; `apiFetch` adds the prefix in one place
rather than at forty call sites; the session cookie's Path narrows to the mount
so two instances on one host cannot sign each other out.
Two things need no prefix at all, and it is worth saying why they were not
given one. A manifest's members resolve against the manifest's own address, so
relative URLs there follow the mount with nothing substituted at build time --
which is also why `public/` needed no template step. The service worker is the
same trick: it is served from the mount, so `new URL("./", self.location)`
tells it where that is, and a worker that derives the value cannot disagree
with the page that registered it.
Anything outside the mount is a 404 rather than the app shell, and
`stripBasePath` does not use `startsWith` -- under `/mail` this process shares
a hostname, and answering `/mailbox` with our index would shadow a neighbour
instead of letting it 404 honestly. For the same reason the notification-click
handler now checks the path as well as the origin: `includeUncontrolled` widens
`matchAll` to the whole origin, which off the root would have navigated a
stranger's tab to our inbox.
Inline images in a draft were the one silent trap. They are matched by their
blob URL on the way out, once unanchored and once anchored, and a bare
`/api/blob/` still appears inside `/mail/api/blob/...` -- so one pattern would
have replaced the tail and left `/mail` in front of a `cid:`, and the other
would have missed and sent the message linking to the sender's own webmail.
Both patterns are built from the base now.
The repositories moved off LINUXexpert-org. The old URLs redirect, so
nothing was broken, but a redirect is not a correct address to publish.
The SOURCE_URL defaults matter most: the AGPL asks whoever runs a
modified version to offer that version's source, and the sign-in page and
About screen show this link. It is in four places that have to agree --
the compose file, .env.example, the server default and the web fallback.
The rest is documentation and issue links.
Three things a licence audit turned up. None of them is a conflict --
every one of the 182 installed packages is permissive, and the relicence
was within the copyright holder's gift -- but all three are ways the
AGPL fails to stick.
The offer was hard-coded to this repository. Section 13 asks whoever
runs a modified version to offer *that* version's source, so every
deployment with a patch in it was pointing at the wrong tree, and would
have gone on doing so unless its operator noticed and edited the About
page. SOURCE_URL now sets it, alongside APP_NAME, and both the sign-in
page and About read it.
The offer was also only visible after signing in. Whoever is looking at
the sign-in form is interacting with the program over a network too, so
the footer carries it now.
And the two workspace packages declared no licence at all. Private, so
npm never minded, but anything reading the tree saw a blank where the
rest of the project says AGPL-3.0-or-later.
Checked both ways round: with SOURCE_URL set to a fork, the sign-in page
and About both point at the fork; with it unset, both fall back to this
repository.
Replace the hard-coded mail.inbuxa.com with generic placeholders: the config
default and .env.example use mail.example.com, the README stops naming the QA
host, and docker-compose now requires STALWART_URL to be set rather than
defaulting to somebody's real server.
Nothing deployed depends on the old default - the running container passes
STALWART_URL explicitly.
jcoffey
jcoffey-dev