JBoss Mail Server 1.0 Milestone 2 Release Candidate 1 has been released. JBoss Mail Server is a pure Java mail server based on the JBoss Microkernel and various JBoss Application Server Components.

Presently the M2 (RC1) release features:

• SMTP Server - to send mail
• POP Server - to retrieve mail
• TLS Support for POP and SMTP - to secure your transport
• SSL Support for POP and SMTP - not all mail clients support TLS
• JMS Integration - mails can be processed by message driven beans
• Extensibility though JMX configuration and custom Mail Listeners
• Database-based mail storage
• Graphical installation
• And more

While this is an early milestone release, JBoss Mail Server is already used by some as their mail server and is already being put to commercial application. JBoss Mail Server seeks to provide a complete mail solution for both tier-1 mail services presently supported by traditional mail servers such as Sendmail and Postfix as well as tier-2 mail services presently provided by Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino. The roadmap for future releases of JBoss Mail Server is emerging and can be located here.

One of the new features of this release is a (still rather rough) graphical installation. To install JBMS, install the Java Development Kit, JBoss Application Server, and grab the JBMS binary from here. Unzip the binary and run the "install.sh" or "install.bat" script (there are also instructions in the included INSTALL.txt). A splash screen will go by and next you'll see the first dialog prompting you for basic configuration information:

If you happened to predefine JBOSS_HOME then the installer will pick it up. The configuration name determines which directory under $JBOSS_HOME/server to find the "deploy" directory. If you run JBoss with the normal "run.sh" or "run.bat" command and no arguments then the answer is "default". If you run it with a "-c bla" then the answer would be bla. Select which mail services you want. A basic mail server consists of SMTP and POP. POPSSL will give you a separate POP instance listening on a separate port encrypted with SSL. Be sure and set your hostname appropriately and even more importantly -- set the domain. The domain is usually what shows up after the @ symbol in your email address. Once you are satisfied click next and you will see this screen:

If you selected less than the default 3 services then your screen may appear slightly differently. A general use mail server should have True, False, True, False. Enabling TLS allows mail clients that support encryption via TLS to connect to the server this way. If you require TLS for SMTP then outside servers will not send you mail. TLS support for POP is a good idea but not all mail clients support it (more often they support dedicated POPSSL) so requiring it may not be such a hot idea. Once you click next you will see:

Your screen may look different depending on what services you have selected. The default port assignments are generally the correct ones. Changing the SMTP port will likely make it impossible for other SMTP servers to locate your server. If you change any of the ports then users will have to be informed because their mail client will suggest these defaults. That being said many UNIX operating systems require you to run JBoss as root if it is to use ports < 1000. Therefore you can set them to higher ports and use iptables to forward the port. Do whatever you feel comfortable with and click next.

If you know what DNS servers you wish to use you can enter them here. If you do not enter any, then JBMS will use whatever your default route is. You can discover your DNS servers either by looking at your network configuration or on most UNIX variants and on Windows XP you can try the nslookup command which usually reveals the IPs of your DNS servers.

For my systems, which are all UNIX-based (Linux, Mac OS X), I just use the default route and hit next.

If you have configured (or plan to configure) another database for your JBoss instance, then you can select it here (so long as you plan to use MySQL) otherwise select other and JBMS will default to Hypersonic mappings. If you need help configuring another database by hand or want to help us add/test defaults for another database to the installation tool then ask on the forum. Mapping is done through the "jbosscmp-jdbc.xml" file which will be located in $JBOSS_HOME/server/$JBOSS_CONFIG/deploy/mail.ear/entitymailbox.jar/META-INF and though JBossMQ's configuration. You can get the appropriate JBossMQ configuration for your database from $JBOSS_HOME/docs/jms and find instructions here. We are interested in making this part automatic for everyone so please give us feedback in the forum. Clicking next brings us to the keystore configuration if you have any TLS or SSL based services (if not skip the next two sections since the installer will):

If you have an existing keystore you can configure it here. If not we can generate one for you. Be sure to enter a password that is at least 6 characters long if you are generating the keystore. We pre-populate the path to the keystore for you. the ${jboss.server.home.dir} alias points to $JBOSS_HOME/server/$JBOSS_CONFIG directory. You can replace this with an absolute path if you wish. If you choose to generate the keystore you'll be brought to another screen configuring it (if not then skip this section):

You must enter the absolute path (even if you used the ${jboss.server.home.dir} alias previously) as the key generation tool is not smart enough to unalias it. You do not have to answer the questions on this screen correctly. You can put whatever you like. Do note that this will create a self-signed key which most clients will warn the users about. If you do not want that then go order a professionally signed key from these nice people. Click next and we'll set up some users:

Here you can add some user/password combos for mail accounts. You can have more than 5 in JBoss Mail Server, but you'll have to configure those yourself (edit $JBOSS_HOME/server/$JBOSS_CONFIG/deploy/mail.ear/mail.sar/META-INF/jboss-service.xml). Once you've added a few users click next.

The installer will install JBMS into your JBoss Application Server instance. You can start JBoss by going to the directory to which you installed it and typing either "bin/run.sh" or "cd bin {enter} run.bat". However, if you had happened to have JBAS running in advance, the installer would have hot deployed JBMS anyhow (see how cool we are)! The messages that JBoss reports should look like this:

Now we can test it! I use Mozilla Thunderbird as my mail client. If you use another mail client, that's okay, but the screenshots below are from Thunderbird. Your mail client will most likely use similar terminology. When I open Thunderbird, I get a menubar at the top of the screen. I select Tools->Account settings:

A screen like like this pops up:

I click add account and am taken to the account wizard:

Obviously I want an "Email account".

If this were a real external facing mail server it would say something like president@whitehouse.gov rather than andy@powerbook.localdomain. Anyhow, these settings are just fine so I press next:

I select POP (IMAP is still a few milestone releases away) and choose "powerbook.localdomain" as my mail server (just like what I configured in the installation). I uncheck global mail store since I want these test mails separate from my work emails.

Andy is indeed my username.

This is just a description for the overall account that will appear as the category in the left hand tree on the main screen for your inbox, sent, trash. The email address makes a fine label, so I click next.

How nice! Thunderbird has congratulated me on this amazing feat! However, I am not quite done since it has chosen my default SMTP server for outgoing mail rather then powerbook.localdomain! Let us fix that by clicking okay and going to the Tools->Account settings and navigating to andy@powerbook.localdomain (or whatever you set).

On OS X for some reason it does not really like connecting by name so I change the server to "127.0.0.1" (this wouldn't be a problem for a real server, but I am running locally on my laptop). I also make sure that "Use Secure Connection (SSL)" is selected. Thunderbird doesn't appear to support TLS, so I use my POPSSL instance. Now lets select "Outgoing Server (SMTP)".

We see my default SMTP server. Lets add one. Click advanced.

We should just see the default SMTP server, click Add.

We'll specify the IP as the server name (name is okay normally but OS X doesn't seem to like "powerbook.localdomain" or even localhost even though I have /etc/hosts configured and lookupd configured to use /etc/hosts). I am going to specify that I must pass a username and password and that I want TLS support. Thunderbird does support TLS for SMTP and its wise to use it. You don't want to pass your mails and password over the broad internet in the cleartext do you? Okay not a problem if we are going to localhost but the point is to lecture you on the sense of using SSL/TLS! I click OK and go back to my server settings:

I want to use a different SMTP server than my default so I click Advanced and click the SMTP tab.

Now let us create a test message:

Make sure your From: is set to your new mail server. Also consider turning off HTML mail in your settings, it annoys most internet users and only spammers find it exceptionally useful! Send the mail to yourself so that we cant test POP!

WHOA! Our mail client does not trust our new mail server! Okay, its just complaining that we do not have a certificate authority singing our certificate, we signed it ourself. Accept the certificate and click okay.

You may not see the above screen. It is mostly because I put my IP as the server name rather than the hostname. Just click okay if you do see this.

You will now be asked for a password. You do remember what you put as your password during the install right? Enter it and click OK. It will send the mail. Now lets click "get mail" for this account from the top menu bar. You will get more SSL warnings (click okay) and then:

Excellent! As you can tell I send myself lots of mails. Some of them I even spell correctly! Anyhow, if you have trouble with your general mail server setup consult the JBoss Wiki or ask in the forum. We hope to get more feedback and discover any major bugs in the next few day otherwise M2-RC1 becomes M2-Final. So please let us know if something seems broken.

This release is not a "performance release" its a feature and stability release. There is some great performance work being done in the HEAD of CVS and in the special branch called "Nokia_Branch_1" (this should be more stable but lacks some of the work on the installation). For those of you who are geekier, the install tool is basically ant with some custom tag libs. If you're interested in it you can check out the module in CVS called "cheese". Remember, JBoss Mail Server M2 RC1 is guaranteed or your money back! :-)