inbuxa-installer

One program that installs the inbuxa suite on the machine you run it on: the mail server, the administration console and the webmail, each as a container or on the host, in any mixture.

inbuxa survey                  what this machine is, as the installer sees it
inbuxa install --dry-run …     what would happen, before any of it does
inbuxa install …               do it

It only ever installs here. A second machine runs it too, and inbuxa join points that machine at a server already running elsewhere.

Linux only, and it says so on any other system rather than reporting a machine that does not exist. Debian, Red Hat and Arch families, and the derivatives people run: Ubuntu, Fedora, Rocky, CentOS, CachyOS. It uses whichever container runtime the distribution ships -- docker where there is one, podman on the Red Hat family -- and refuses a shape the machine cannot deliver, with the reason.

What works today

This is early. What is built:

• survey -- the machine's facts: distribution, init, whether Docker is usable by this user, Node's version, which of the suite's ports are free and what holds the ones that are not, memory, disk, and whether an install is already recorded here. It changes nothing.

• install --dry-run -- the whole plan: every file, unit, container, port, DNS record and credential, and a refusal with a reason when the machine cannot carry out what was asked.

• deps -- what a shape needs that this machine has not got, and, with --install, the doing of it: the Docker daemon from the distribution's own archive, the Compose plugin and Node from their official builds, both pinned by version and checked against a checksum in the source before anything is put in place. install --install-deps does the same as part of a run. A missing dependency is an offer, not a refusal.

• install --yes -- carries the plan out, for container shapes: writes the deployment, fetches the images, brings the mail server up in bootstrap mode with a credential that exists only for that step, completes bootstrap, brings the rest up without it, exempts the front ends from the auto-ban, creates the first mailbox, writes credentials.txt and dns.zone, and then checks that all three answer.

• plan -f / apply -f / export -- a whole installation described in one file, however many machines. Each machine acts on its own part and prints the command to run on the others; it never reaches them. plan diffs the file against what is actually installed here and changes nothing; apply converges to it, adding and removing components; export writes the file from what is already here.

• status -- what is installed, what is running, and where those two disagree: a container stopped by hand, or a deployment nothing recorded installing. It exits non-zero when they disagree, so a machine can be asked in a script whether it still matches itself.

Not built yet: host installs, the terminal interface, join, status, upgrade, uninstall. The design is in the inbuxa specification (§6.1 and the installer draft); the phases are there too.

inbuxa install --local --domain example.test --install-deps --yes

is the shortest thing that works today: the whole suite on loopback, with no DNS and no certificates, on a machine that starts with nothing. Without --local it takes the real ports, puts Caddy in front and obtains certificates -- which e2e/cases/install-public.sh proves against a private CA, with no internet and no public name involved.

Building and testing

go build ./cmd/inbuxa

The installer writes units, creates users and takes ports 25 and 443, so it is tested on a throwaway virtual machine rather than on anybody's desk:

e2e/vm/up.sh                              a Debian 13 machine, in qemu, as you
DISTRO=fedora e2e/vm/up.sh                or fedora, rocky9, ubuntu2404, arch, debian12
e2e/vm/run.sh e2e/cases/survey.sh         what it says about a machine
e2e/vm/run.sh e2e/cases/deps.sh           the offer, and taking it
e2e/vm/run.sh e2e/cases/install-local.sh   a whole suite, and signing in to it
e2e/vm/run.sh e2e/cases/install-public.sh  the same with real ports and certificates
e2e/vm/run.sh e2e/cases/topology.sh       growing and shrinking from a file
e2e/vm/run.sh e2e/cases/status-export.sh  intent against reality, and the file
e2e/vm/down.sh                            remove it

Each case starts from a copy of the machine taken when it was new, so a run is free to break it and a failure is the installer's rather than the last run's leftovers. e2e/vm/up.sh needs qemu, KVM and xorriso; nothing needs root on your machine.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later. Some of this began as ihasmail-oneshot, which is ours and under the same license.