A 3-node rehearsal found every settings reload refused, cluster-wide,
because one node couldn't resolve the Pyzor server:
- PyzorConfig::parse resolved the host while building the settings and
made a failed lookup a build error. It now keeps the host and port and
resolves when a message is checked (an IP address is used as is, a
name is reused for five minutes, the lookup counts against the Pyzor
timeout). A failure there is a Pyzor error for that message.
- A milter's hostname was resolved the same way, with a blocking
to_socket_addrs in async code. An IP address is kept; a name is now
resolved on each connection.
Other build-time I/O is already non-fatal: directories that can't
connect become unavailable with a warning (DIR-21), and the AI model
locality check only warns.
reload_registry swapped the core only when the whole build was free of
errors, while boot runs with whatever built. One failing object thus
refused every later reload, and the running settings went stale. Now a
reload is refused only for errors in objects that built when the
running settings were built (at boot or by the last applied reload):
applying it would lose those. Objects that already failed then are
missing from the running settings anyway, as at boot, so their errors
are logged and returned as known_errors but don't hold the reload back.
Refusing on new errors keeps a bad edit from taking a working object
out of service; the admin gets the error instead.
ReloadSettings now says "Settings were not reloaded." and names the
object and its error ("Tracer with id ...: Only one console tracer is
allowed"), with a count of any further errors. A refused reload after a
directory change logs its errors too.
system::reload::reload_tests (new): with Pyzor enabled on an
unresolvable host, ReloadSettings succeeds (on main it fails with
"Invalid address: failed to lookup address information"); an IP host
needs no lookup; a new build error refuses the reload, names the object
and leaves the running settings unchanged; the same error, once known
from the running settings' build, no longer blocks; once fixed, a new
error there blocks again. smtp::inbound::milter's session test now
names its milter "localhost", so the connect-time lookup is exercised.
A complete mail and collaboration server, every feature included, under the AGPL
inbuxa is a mail and collaboration server: JMAP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, CalDAV, CardDAV and WebDAV, in one Rust binary, with ihasmail as its web front end. It is a fork of Stalwart. Project site: inbuxa.org. Documentation: docs.inbuxa.org.
Stalwart ships some features only in a paid Enterprise Edition: multi-tenancy, masked email, undelete and others. inbuxa ships everything to everybody under the AGPL-3.0, rebuilding those features independently and without using any of Stalwart's Enterprise code.
What's different from Stalwart
- Every feature, one edition. No license key, no edition checks, no
upsell. See
docs/spec/SPEC.md§4 for the features being rebuilt, anddocs/spec/features/for each one's specification. - Webmail and administration by ihasmail, as a separate service that can run beside the server or elsewhere. Stalwart's own web interface is removed, so there's no web front end on the mail host.
- Clean-room rebuilds. Enterprise-only code is stripped from every
upstream release before it's imported. The rebuilt features are written
from specifications that use only public sources (
docs/spec/SPEC.md§3).
How the fork is kept
Upstream releases arrive as stripped snapshots, never with upstream's git
history, which contains Enterprise code. tools/fork/strip.py builds each
snapshot on top of upstream's own ossify.py, then verifies it independently.
The report for every import is in docs/fork/strip-reports/. See
docs/spec/SPEC.md §2.
Building
cargo build --release -p inbuxa # the binary is target/release/inbuxa
docker build -t inbuxa . # or the container image
Settings are read from INBUXA_* environment variables. An existing Stalwart
install's STALWART_* variables aren't read: the server stops at startup and
names each one to rename.
New installs keep their data in /var/lib/inbuxa and logs in
/var/log/inbuxa. Existing installs keep the paths their configuration
already names, so none of their data moves.
License and credits
inbuxa is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.
It is a fork of Stalwart, copyright © Stalwart Labs LLC, modified by Coffey Labs in 2026. Upstream's copyright notices are kept on every file they cover, and every upstream file this fork changed says so in its header, under the notice it came with. Stalwart's files are dual-licensed AGPL-3.0-only or Stalwart's Enterprise License, and inbuxa takes them under the AGPL-3.0 only. A few of those files also carry code from other projects under MIT or BSD licenses, which stays under those licenses; THIRD-PARTY.md lists it with its notices. "Stalwart" is Stalwart Labs' name. inbuxa isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Stalwart Labs.
The inbuxa mark reuses ihasmail's cat-and-envelope artwork.