Deploy Mailtrain With Docker

The steps below show you how to deploy a minimal Mailtrain server (an open source Mailchimp alternative) on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Minimum Requirements

• 1 GB of RAM
• Preferably a 1GB swap file (create one)

Steps

Make sure you are running Ubuntu 18.04 with the latest LTS kernel, and if not upgrade it.

Install docker.

Install docker-compose.

Download the latest release. At the time of writing this post, it is 1.24.0, but be sure to check and update the command below accordingly.

wget https://github.com/Mailtrain-org/mailtrain/archive/v1.24.1.tar.gz
tar --extract --gzip --file v1.24.1.tar.gz
rm v1.24.1.tar.gz

Navigate to within the mailtrain folder and build the image.

cd mailtrain-*
sudo docker build -t mailtrain-node:latest .

Navigate back home.

cd ~

Copy and paste the content below into a file called docker-compose.yml.

version: '3'
services:
  mailtrain-node:
    image: mailtrain-node:latest
    container_name: "mailtrain-node"
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "80:3000"
    volumes:
      - $HOME/volumes/mailtrain/production.toml:/app/config/production.toml
      - $HOME/volumes/mailtrain/mailtrain-node-data:/app/public/grapejs/uploads
      - $HOME/volumes/mailtrain/mailtrain-node-data:/app/public/mosaico/uploads

  database:
    image: mariadb
    container_name: db
    restart: always
    environment:
      # @see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/source/mediawiki/browse/master/includes/DefaultSettings.php
      MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD: 1
      MYSQL_DATABASE: mailtrain
      MYSQL_USER: mailtrain
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: mymailtrainpassword
    volumes:
       - $HOME/volumes/mysql/data:/var/lib/mysql

Create a folder called volumes.

mkdir -p $HOME/volumes/mailtrain/

Copy the default toml config file into your volumes folder to be used.

cp $HOME/mailtrain-1.24.1/config/default.toml \
  $HOME/volumes/mailtrain/production.toml

Update MySQL credentials in the config file you just created.

editor $HOME/volumes/mailtrain/production.toml

...
[mysql]
host="db"
user="mailtrain"
password="mymailtrainpassword"
database="mailtrain"
...

[redis]
enabled=false
...

If you are using a local MySQL server, you still need to plug in your server's IP address (not hostname) for the host field for it to work with the docker container. You will also need to ensure your MySQL server allows remote connections by commenting out the bind-address line in the /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf config file.

Now deploy the docker containers with:

docker-compose up -d

Conclusion

You now have a working mailtrain server. Be sure to open your web browser to the ip or hostname of your server and authenticate with admin : test before going to the settings area to change your login credentials, and plug in your SMTP or AWS SES credentials for sending emails.

Optional - Exposing The Database

If you want to be able to access the database remotely, add the ports line to the docker-compose file for the database like so:

version: '3'
services:
  mailtrain-node:
    image: mailtrain-node:latest
    container_name: "mailtrain-node"
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "80:3000"
    volumes:
      - $HOME/volumes/mailtrain/production.toml:/app/config/production.toml
      - $HOME/volumes/mailtrain/mailtrain-node-data:/app/public/grapejs/uploads
      - $HOME/volumes/mailtrain/mailtrain-node-data:/app/public/mosaico/uploads

  database:
    image: mariadb
    container_name: db
    restart: always
    ports:
        - 3306:3306
    environment:
      # @see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/source/mediawiki/browse/master/includes/DefaultSettings.php
      MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD: 1
      MYSQL_DATABASE: mailtrain
      MYSQL_USER: mailtrain
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: mymailtrainpassword
    volumes:
       - $HOME/volumes/mysql/data:/var/lib/mysql

If you do this, then you must change the password from mymailtrainpassword to something random nobody will know, in both this config and the production.toml file.

References

• Github - Mailtrain-org/mailtrain