Running ihasmail is covered on docs.ihasmail.org, now including the
published image, the admin URL and BASE_PATH. Architecture, the mock's
switches and version numbers move to CONTRIBUTING.md, and 0.16.21's
client-visible changes to KNOWN-ISSUES.md. The Gmail comparisons go.
The dashboard's link to Stalwart's own administration needed
STALWART_ADMIN_URL, which an operator had to know to set. Everything it
holds can be read from the server:
- the origin is the host Stalwart advertises in its own session URLs, the
one people reach it at even when ihasmail talks to it on a private
address;
- the prefix is where its web interface application is installed. The
production server's x:Application reads "Stalwart Web Interface",
enabled, urlPrefix {"/admin", "/account"}, and /admin is also what
Stalwart writes at first boot.
So, for an account that administers, the account info fetch now asks the
account's own server for its applications and links to origin + /admin/.
An installation whose web interface is disabled or moved gets no link; an
administrator who may not read applications gets Stalwart's default
/admin. It is cached with the rest of the account info.
STALWART_ADMIN_URL and a servers file entry's adminUrl still win, for an
administration that lives somewhere else. A routed domain without one now
takes what its own server said, never the default server's.
On a server that does not report Enterprise -- or reports no edition --
tenants hold nobody to anything beyond an ordinary user's permissions, so
the page is the notice alone: no New tenant, no search, no list, and no
tenant query is made. The mock's edition is MOCK_EDITION now (default oss,
as before), so MOCK_EDITION=enterprise brings the section back to work on.
A tenant is a separate organisation on one server: its own people,
domains and limits, and an administrator who manages only what is in it.
It gets a section under Access, gated by sysTenantQuery and sysTenantGet,
with a notice on a server that does not report Enterprise, where anyone
inside a tenant is held to an ordinary user's permissions.
The panel edits the tenant's name, logo, role and limits. The logo is an
https address, drawn through the image proxy the strict image policy
requires, or an image data URL. Limits change one quotas/<name> pointer
each, so the four ihasmail does not offer keep their values, and an empty
field is no limit. The role is the most anyone inside can be allowed.
Stalwart keeps no list on a tenant -- each account, group, domain, list and
role names its own -- so what a tenant holds is counted with memberTenantId
queries and shown against its limits. Domains are added and taken out from
the tenant's panel, one memberTenantId change each; only a domain in no
tenant can be added, and its accounts stay where they are. Delete is offered
once every count reads zero.
A tenant does nothing until someone administers it, so the account panel
gains a Tenant choice for an administrator who can read tenants: an
Administrator inside a tenant administers that tenant. Nobody moves their
own account.
The mock has a tenant holding a domain and an administrator, a spare domain
to assign, memberTenantId filters on every query, and Stalwart's rule that
only an administrator outside every tenant may move things into one. A test
of taking a domain back out found that the mock's pointer handling dropped a
top-level null instead of storing it, so nothing had ever been cleared that
way; it stores null now, as the server reads it back.
Nothing about tenants has been written on a live server: production has
none. KNOWN-ISSUES says what was read from source.
Thirty-nine new strings and one plural, in all nine catalogues.
A role is a named set of permissions given to accounts, groups and
tenants. It gets its own section under a new Access heading: every role
listed with the permissions it grants once its bases are followed, and a
panel to create, edit and delete one.
A role builds on others and has everything they grant; a denial anywhere in
the tree wins, which is how Stalwart resolves it (permissions.rs unions
enabled and disabled across the tree, then subtracts). The picker is
Stalwart's own list of permissions, under its headings, searchable and
filterable to what is granted or set here. Each permission is not set,
allowed or denied, and one that is inherited says which role it comes from.
Only permissions the viewer holds can be allowed, because Stalwart refuses
the rest, and a role carrying anything the viewer lacks opens read-only with
no delete, because Stalwart checks a grant but not a delete. Saving sends a
pointer for each permission and base role that changed.
The roles Stalwart hands out by default, read from x:Authentication, say so
before they are changed and cannot be deleted here; a role still in use is
kept by the server, and the refusal names what uses it.
The permission list is Stalwart's schema. A new route, GET
/api/admin/permissions, fetches /api/schema as the signed-in account and
returns only names and labels, behind the same two gates as the registry
methods and held in memory for an hour. Its labels are English only, so
every one of the 661 has a translation in each of the eight other
languages, in its own file keyed by permission name and loaded only when
Roles opens. A permission a later Stalwart adds shows its English label. A
test holds every language to the 0.16.22 snapshot: nothing missing, nothing
stale.
The mock answers x:Role/set with the grant check, loops and in-use
refusals, reads the defaults from x:Authentication, and serves the schema
gzipped as the real one is.
Fifty-two new strings and two plurals in all nine catalogues, and 661
permission labels with 59 headings in each of the eight translations.
A mailing list is an address that passes mail on to everyone on it. To
Stalwart it is its own object, x:MailingList, behind sysMailingList*, so
it gets its own section under Directory after Groups: search, fifty to a
page with each list's recipient count, and a panel to create, edit and
delete one.
Recipients are a property of the list, so unlike a group's members they
save with the rest of the panel. What Save sends for them is only what was
added and removed, one recipients/<address> pointer each -- the patch the
live server accepted -- so a recipient added elsewhere while the panel was
open is not taken out. They can be pasted several at a time, from a
spreadsheet column, a comma-separated line or Name <address>; anything with
an @ that is not an address stays in the box with a note. Past a dozen, a
filter narrows them.
That is all a list is in Stalwart -- no owners, moderation or posting
rules -- so that is all the panel offers.
The mock answers x:MailingList with two lists, the recipient set's live
shape, and the refusals a wrong address, a clash with an account and a
missing permission get.
Twenty-five new strings and one plural, in all nine catalogues.
A group is a shared address and mailbox and the people who share it. To
Stalwart it is an x:Account of type Group, behind the same sysAccount*
permissions as a person, so it sits under Directory beside Accounts:
search, a page of fifty with each group's member count, and a panel to
create, edit and delete one.
Membership lives on the member, not the group. Members are the users whose
memberGroupIds name it, and adding or removing one is a single
memberGroupIds/<group> pointer on that user's account -- true or null --
which leaves their other groups alone. Changes apply straight away rather
than riding on Save, so the list is always what the server has. Nobody can
add or remove themselves, the same line the account panel draws at one's
own role.
A group's role is Default or Custom, not a person's User or Admin, and it
is what the group may do: in 0.16 a user's permissions come from their own
roles only, and a group gives its members what is shared with it. Only
roles the viewer could grant are offered.
Delete takes the members out first and then deletes the group, the order
a domain's keys go before the domain, because the registry keeps anything
another object names. A role that cannot change the members' accounts is
not offered a delete it could only half finish.
The mock's groups had a person's roles, accepted a memberGroupIds filter
without applying it, and answered a linked delete with the wrong shape;
all three follow the source now, and it refuses nested groups and
memberships of things that are not groups.
Nothing about groups has been run against a live server yet: production
has none, and every operation is a write. KNOWN-ISSUES says what was read
from source.
Thirty-five new strings, two of them plurals, in all nine catalogues.
A line under the cards says where the rest is: detailed metrics, the
delivery queue, logs and server settings are in Stalwart's own
administration. It links there when the operator sets STALWART_ADMIN_URL,
and stays plain text otherwise, because STALWART_URL is how this server
reaches Stalwart and is often an address no browser can open.
Several servers: a servers file entry may now be an object,
{"url": ..., "adminUrl": ...}, and a session routed to that server gets its
adminUrl. A routed domain without one gets no link rather than the default
server's, for the same reason routing never falls back. The URL is sent
only to a session that may administer.
The shipped example file stopped the server at startup: its "_comment"
key was read as a domain and refused as not a URL, while the test that
checks the example skipped it. Keys starting with an underscore are notes
now -- no mail domain starts with one -- and the example is also loaded
through the real parser in a test, so the two cannot disagree again.
Two new strings, in all nine catalogues.
Administration used to open on its first section. It opens on a grid of
cards now: users, domains, messages waiting in the delivery queue, server
memory, and the last 24 hours' received and sent. Each card is there only
when the role holds what its number needs -- a count is a query, the
metric history a query and a get -- so a helpdesk role that reads accounts
and domains sees those two cards and nothing about the server.
What the cards count is whatever Stalwart answers for the signed-in
account, which scopes a tenant administrator's accounts, domains and queue
to the tenancy. The metric history has no tenant in it, and Stalwart's
Tenant Administrator role does not hold it, so a tenant's dashboard is
users, domains and pending.
The history is Enterprise-only and switched off by default. A server that
refuses it leaves those cards off; one that records nothing says so rather
than showing zeroes. Received and sent add up the queue counters Stalwart's
own dashboard uses, filtered with the comparison names the live server
accepts (a bare timestamp is unsupportedFilter). The column count follows
the number of cards so rows stay even, and falls back by the grid's own
width rather than the window's.
The server's test for whether an account is offered Administration matches
the client's again, now that a count is enough. The mock answers the queue
and an hourly history ending in the current hour; MOCK_METRICS=off refuses
the history as Community does, a tenant administrator gets the queue, and
helpdesk reads domains, as the demo's does.
ROADMAP and FEATURES said reporting and queues were out of scope; they say
the dashboard reads a handful of numbers and that managing queues, logs
and settings stays out. KNOWN-ISSUES records what was settled on the live
server and what was only read from source.
Fourteen new strings, in all nine catalogues.
ihasmail-oneshot for a new single-host deployment, stalwart-migrator for
an existing 0.15.5 server, each with what it is for and where it starts.
Quick start also says, before its steps, that a host with no Stalwart yet
can use ihasmail-oneshot instead.
0.16.22 changed four things a client sees from CalendarEvent/get and
ContactCard/get. Read from its source and the tests that came with it:
- baseEventId is the master's id on a synthetic id and null otherwise; an
event read by its stored id used to report its own id. A one-off from an
expanded query still has a synthetic id, so it still carries a base.
- recurrenceRule and recurrenceOverrides named on a synthetic id come back
null rather than absent.
- useDefaultAlerts is the reader's own and reads false until set.
- an empty properties list returns id alone, for both methods. pick already
did that, so only a comment changes for contacts.
With properties omitted the stored object comes back as before.
The README said a one-off now carries a null base, which only holds for one
read by its stored id; it now says that, and that the mock follows.
The live instance was tested on 0.16.22, not only read against its diff. The
badge says tested against it again, and 0.16.21 becomes the release before.
The live instance moved to Stalwart 0.16.22 on 2026-09-13. The badge and the
requirements section now say so. The hand validation stays credited to 0.16.21,
because 0.16.22 was read against its diff rather than re-run, and the four
calendar and contacts JMAP changes it makes are listed, along with the fact
that the mock does not follow them yet.
KNOWN-ISSUES carried Administration as read from source and untested. It
has now run against production: the Accounts filter was wrong (type, not
@type; fixed in #336) and everything else held -- permission casing, Basic
auth on admin calls, account and domain shapes, the zone file format, DKIM
lookup by domain, catch-all addresses, and removing a domain with its keys.
What remains unproved (an administrator-set password, and the grant-check
gap behind the outranking guard) is said plainly, along with the untranslated
invalidPatch description and the two gates that decide who may administer.
README gains Administration in its feature list and MOCK_ROLE among the mock's
switches.
Three pins and a types package all described Node 22, and moving any one
of them alone puts the build somewhere the others are not: @types/node
on its own would typecheck against APIs the runtime does not have, and
the base image on its own would ship a major CI never exercised. So
ci.yml, publish.yml, release.yml, both Dockerfile stages and
@types/node move in one change.
Worth knowing before this is deployed: 26 is Current, not LTS. node:26-
alpine reports lts=none, where 24-alpine is Krypton and the 22-alpine we
are leaving is Jod. 26 is due to become Active LTS in October. Nothing
here needs 26 over 24 -- the pins are a single number if the LTS line is
preferred.
engines stays at >=20.19, which is the floor for running ihasmail rather
than the version we build it on; the README's recommendation follows CI
to 26.
Checked on the runtime, not just in CI: the image builds on 26-alpine,
starts, and answers /api/health, and the login, SSE and body-carrying
POST checks from the node-server upgrade pass against a server on
26.8.1.
@vitejs/plugin-react 6 peers on vite ^8 and nothing lower, so the build
had to move before the plugin could. vite 8 bundles with rolldown rather
than rollup, which is most of what is here.
The object form of `manualChunks` -- a chunk name against the list of
packages in it -- is gone; rolldown takes groups tested against module
paths instead. Same two chunks come out, `vendor` and `icons`, with the
same contents; `icons` is tried first because the first matching group
wins. `rollupOptions` is now a deprecated alias, so it is spelled
`rolldownOptions`.
The lockfile is regenerated rather than patched. vitest depends on vite
itself, and an incremental install was happy to leave 6.4.3 hoisted for
vitest while web built against 8.3.0 -- two majors in one tree, which is
not a state to ship. A clean install collapses to one.
vite 8 wants Node ^20.19 || >=22.12, above the >=20.10 the README and
engines promised, so both say 20.19 now. CI and the image are on 22 and
were never affected.
Rolldown reports two modules that are imported both statically and
dynamically, so the dynamic import cannot split them out. That is true
of the source either way -- store/sieve.ts has three static importers
and one dynamic -- and is left alone here.
The bullet asserted that ihasmail stays stateless without saying what
that is scoped to, which reads as a claim about the file rather than
about the process. Name both halves: the format is ihasmail's, the file
is the account's.
The README badge still read 0.16.20, in both the label and the shield it
links to. It is the first version number a reader sees and it was the one
place the prose update missed, because it is HTML rather than Markdown.
Two entries had gone further than stale and were wrong. FEATURES said
occurrence ids are not stable across a write, and KNOWN-ISSUES carried
that as a live hazard with the five-week series that proved it. 0.16.21
fixed exactly that: an occurrence is identified by its recurrence id now,
and holding an id across a write keeps it on its own date. Both entries
say so, keep the old behaviour and the evidence for it because the client
still supports 0.16 as a whole, and record what replaced it.
The defence in the client stays either way, and the reason is written
down: re-resolving by recurrenceId costs one lookup, a date can still
leave a series, and 0.16.20 is still a server someone may be running.
The KNOWN-ISSUES header now says the live instance runs 0.16.21 and,
unlike the upgrades before it, that this one was re-run rather than read
against the diff — with what was exercised by hand.
Themes were not in "What's in it" at all, which is odd for something a
reader sees before anything else. There is now a bullet for the twelve,
saying that palette and light-or-dark are separate choices and that a
palette which would not meet the contrast this app claims is not written.
FEATURES lists the six new palettes and what each borrows for its light
half, and records the rule that changed with them: body text used to be
checked and then accepted or rejected, which would have turned away five
of the six over a bar their designers never aimed at, so it is now lifted
along its own hue like every other text tone. Twenty-one of the twenty-two
borrowed halves need at least one lift.
The message-theming entry gained the second switch, including why the
first one alone did nothing for most real mail.
The Stalwart section records what the release is validated against rather
than only what it requires: 0.16.21, run against a real instance, with the
four client-visible JMAP changes named. The mock section gains its third
switch and says it tracks the current release, confirms each behaviour
against a real server first, and rewrites rather than deletes the test
that pinned an old behaviour.
A signed message now says whether that holds up, as it is read. This is
verification only: nothing here signs, encrypts or decrypts, and the
private-key question that blocks those is untouched. Verifying needed
none of it, because the certificate travels inside the message -- which
is why this is the half that could be built.
What it checks. For multipart/signed carrying PKCS#7, the exact bytes of
the signed part -- headers included, canonicalised to CRLF -- are hashed
against the messageDigest attribute, and the signature over the signed
attributes is verified with WebCrypto against the certificate inside the
message. RSA PKCS#1 v1.5 and ECDSA over P-256/384/521, with SHA-256, 384
or 512.
The trust model is the design, and it is deliberately small. A browser
has no system trust store, and the certificate arrives inside the
message, so anyone can self-sign as anyone: on its own a good signature
shows only that the sender held the key they attached. So the word
"verified" is never rendered, and the reassuring case is not the loud
one. What carries the weight is remembering -- the first signed message
from an address pins its fingerprint, later ones are compared, and a
signer that changed is reported with both names and told to check by
another route. Trust on first use, no certificate authority anywhere.
The pins live in the account's settings rather than the browser: one
that only a single device knew would greet the same correspondent as new
everywhere else, which is how people are trained to click past the one
warning that matters. A pin records the message that created it, so the
message that established a signer keeps saying so instead of appearing
to be corroborated by itself -- without that, the very first signed
message anybody receives reads as "the same signer as before", where
before is itself. A changed, mismatched or expired signer is never
pinned, since writing the anomaly into the baseline makes every later
message agree with it.
Three things are declined rather than attempted, and all three say
"could not check" rather than "does not check out", because ignorance
and an accusation are different claims:
- OpenPGP, by name. The signature carries no key and there is nowhere
to get the sender's: x:PublicKey is the account's OWN registry, and
a keyserver or WKD lookup would tell a third party who you
correspond with -- the leak the image proxy exists to close.
- SHA-1. Not forgeable in practice today, still not something to put a
tick beside.
- RSA-PSS, whose salt length lives in parameters this does not read.
Guessing wrong would report a good signature as bad.
Nothing validates a chain: no CA bundle is shipped and revocation is not
checked. "Issued by" reports what the certificate claims, and a
self-signed one claims itself.
The DER, CMS, X.509 and MIME readers are hand-written and deliberately
narrow -- no new dependency, and the whole verifier is a lazily imported
8.6 kB chunk that a reader of unsigned mail never downloads. The one
place this is easy to get quietly wrong has its own function and its own
test: signed attributes are signed as a SET OF, not as the [0] IMPLICIT
they arrive as, and hashing the message instead would make every
signature "pass".
Tested against real `openssl smime -sign` output rather than hand-built
fixtures -- RSA, ECDSA, a tampered copy, and a valid signature by a
certificate for somebody else -- because a signed message written by
hand only agrees with whatever its author believed the format to be.
Also driven in a browser against the mock, which now serves three real
signed messages so every branch of the banner is reachable.
Translations: 34 new strings in all nine catalogues, 306 entries.
Falling back to English is unchanged at 24 per language.
A fix announced as "live" on a closed issue means the QA webmail server,
which deploys from main. It does not mean the image anybody has pulled:
that is cut weekly, on Mondays at 09:00 UTC, so between one Monday and
the next main is ahead of the newest release by up to a week.
This confused the reporter on #174 this week, and it was my wording that
did it -- three comments invited him to try changes that were merged and
not yet published. The distinction was written down nowhere.
Placed above "this file is for people working on ihasmail" rather than
under Container images, because the person who needs it is reading to
decide whether to pull, and by the time they reach that section they have
usually pulled. Container images gains the cadence too, since "on every
release" says nothing about how often a release happens.
The hour is given as approximate on purpose: GitHub runs scheduled
workflows best-effort and delays them when its queue is busy.
Docs only. No strings added, no catalogues touched.
README has said `docker run ... ghcr.io/coffey-labs/ihasmail:latest` since the
Docker instructions were written, and the docs site repeats it in four places.
Nothing ever pushed that image. `docker pull` answers `denied`, because the
package does not exist: .github/workflows held ci.yml and nothing else, and
there is no reference to ghcr.io, docker/build-push or docker push anywhere in
this repo. The instructions have been wrong the whole time.
Adds the workflow that makes them true. It fires on a published release, and
by hand for a ref -- the same dispatch trigger ci.yml carries, and the only
way to build an image for the tags that predate this file.
Two architectures on native runners rather than one build under QEMU.
Emulated arm64 runs `npm ci` and the Vite build through instruction
translation, which takes tens of minutes and sometimes exhausts memory;
ubuntu-24.04-arm is free for public repositories and does it at native speed.
The cost is pushing by digest and joining the two into one manifest at the
end, which is what the third job does.
`latest` moves only for a real release. A prerelease that moved it would hand
every `:latest` deployment an unfinished build, and a dispatch run has to ask
for it deliberately.
Also documents the images in README: which tags exist, that the dated tag is
the one to pin, and that building it yourself is still fully supported --
`docker compose up --build` is unchanged and the image is a convenience, not a
new requirement.
Worth knowing before the first run: GHCR creates a new package **private**,
even for a public repository, so an anonymous pull will still be refused until
the visibility is changed by hand. That is written at the top of the workflow,
because it is the failure that looks like success.
One ihasmail in front of several Stalwarts, from #238. STALWART_URL stays
required and stays the default, so an installation that sets nothing behaves
exactly as it always has -- the mapping only adds domains that go elsewhere.
An unlisted domain goes to the default. So does a bare username, which
Stalwart accepts and which has no domain to map at all.
A listed domain never falls back. If its server is unreachable that sign-in
fails rather than retrying against the default, because falling back would
authenticate somebody against a server their domain was deliberately routed
away from -- and if the same account name existed there, they would land in
another tenant's mailbox. The fallback is a decision about unmapped domains,
taken before any network call, not a recovery path.
Smaller than it sounds because only four places read config.stalwartUrl, all
in upstream.ts. The upstream session now records which server issued it, since
the relative URLs inside it only mean anything against that server, and every
route already holding a session gets the right upstream without a second
lookup. The client is untouched: it talks to one proxy and never learns there
is more than one server behind it, which is exactly why this is small and
several-servers-at-once is not.
The upstream is derived from the username rather than stored on the session,
so a mapping change takes effect on restart instead of being frozen into
sessions that outlive it.
Validated at boot the way the settings policy is: malformed JSON, a duplicate
domain once normalised, a missing file or a value that is not an http(s) URL
all stop the server. Domains are lower-cased and stripped of a trailing dot,
because that is how one arrives off a username and comparing them any other
way means a mapping that silently never matches. The servers themselves are
not contacted -- a mapping is a routing table, not a health check, and one
customer's outage must not stop ihasmail starting for the other four.
Eight tests on the routing, two on the shipped example, and the four refusals
checked by hand against a real config load.
#231 added the policy but nothing to copy. The repo already answers this the
same way four times over -- Caddyfile.example, deploy.example.sh,
nginx.example.conf, .env.example -- and the new feature was the one thing
configurable here with no example beside it.
settings-policy.example.json carries all three sections with the reasoning in
it, including the part worth being deliberate about: a `changes` entry
overrides a decision a reader has already made, and if you want it to stay put
regardless that is `enforced` instead. JSON has no comments, so the commentary
is in `_`-prefixed keys, which is safe because the server reads three names and
ignores everything else.
A test asserts the shipped example stays valid against the rules the parser
enforces -- unique versions, settings objects, no comment key colliding with a
real section. An example that has drifted is worse than none: somebody copies
it, the server refuses to start, and the first experience of the feature is a
crash loop.
.env.example gains the four variables, commented out, with the file form and
the inline form and the note that the file wins over the variables.
Confirmed against the real image on the deploy host rather than reasoned
about: an immutable container -- --read-only, IMMUTABLE=1, SESSION_FILE=
empty -- starts and serves the policy both with a read-only file mount and
with the environment variables alone. The feature costs nothing in
immutability, because the only thing it writes is the applied-changes stamp,
and that goes in the reader's own settings file on Stalwart like every other
setting.
The last third of #207, and the only part that remembers anything.
An admin turns a setting on for people who are already here -- which a default
cannot do, since a default only seeds an account that has none -- and readers
may still turn it back off afterwards, which enforcement does not allow. The
difference between the two is entirely in the remembering.
Each change carries its own version, and an account stores the ones it has had
in its own settings file. Ids rather than a high-water mark, so a change dated
earlier than one already applied is not silently skipped -- the reporter's
analogy is a schema migration, and this is that shape.
Per account rather than per device, because ihasmail's settings are not
browser-local: they live in a file in the reader's own JMAP Files, with the
browser holding a cache. Signing in on a phone does not apply everything a
second time.
A change reaches somebody who had already decided otherwise. That is intended
and confirmed on the issue: the point is to reach everybody who is already
here. It is applied once, and their next decision sticks.
One `update` for however many are pending, since each would otherwise push a
settings file of its own. Enforced values still win, being applied after. A
change whose settings this build does not have at all is dropped rather than
recorded, or it would never run on the ihasmail that does have them.
The reader is told. A setting moving under somebody without a word is the part
of this worth being uneasy about, so the count is toasted with a way into
Settings.
README gains the Docker half the user asked for: a mounted policy file, the
same thing as environment variables for a deployment with no volume, a compose
fragment, and the fact that a policy is read once at startup so editing it
means a restart.
Closes#207.
The first two thirds of #207. A school wanting "warn about outside senders"
on for three thousand pupils cannot ask three thousand pupils, and the
reporter is right that this is a company policy rather than a preference.
Two powers, and the difference between them is the whole request. `defaults`
seed an account that has never had settings of its own and can be changed
afterwards like anything else -- a starting point, not a rule. `enforced` are
reapplied on every load and cannot be changed at all.
Enforced controls stay visible and go dead, with a line saying why. The issue
asked for that by name: a control that is simply missing reads as a bug to
somebody who has used ihasmail without a policy.
The lock is in the settings store rather than only on the controls. There is
one door -- `update` -- and putting it there means an imported settings file,
a settings file synced from a device that predates the policy, and a control
somebody adds later and forgets to check are all covered by construction.
Reset goes back to the installation's answer rather than to ihasmail's, so it
cannot be a way around a policy either.
Configured by environment variable or by a file, because ihasmail's own
production runs read-only with no volume: an installation that cannot mount a
file can still set a variable. Keys this build does not have are dropped, the
same rule an imported settings file already gets -- a policy written against a
newer ihasmail must not put a setting nothing reads into everybody's synced
settings file. Malformed JSON stops the server rather than quietly doing
nothing, since a policy that silently did not apply is indistinguishable from
the feature not working.
Tier three -- enforcing a setting once while still letting readers change it
afterwards -- is not here. It needs a decision the reporter and I have not
made yet, and it is the only part that stores anything new.
Refs #207.
Somebody deciding whether to spend an evening on a mail client wants to
see it before they read about it. The link sits under the logo, above the
badges, because a demo answers the question the badges are only evidence
for.
The line under it says what the demo is -- invented mail, nothing kept --
so nobody arrives expecting to sign in with an address of their own.
The mail bullet in "What's in it" listed everything a message can turn
into -- a reply, a filter, a receipt -- except the newest one. It now
names the event too, and says the guests come with it, which is the half
that is not obvious from the feature's name.
The picker offers English plus nine translations. I wrote it up as nine
in total with eight unread, which is off by one in the direction that
undercounts the work and, worse, misstates how many catalogues are
waiting for a speaker to read them.
Nine of the ten are machine-made and unread — all of them, not all but
one — so the sentence that matters reads more sharply than the wrong
version did, not less.
The translations shipped today and the docs still said "no languages but
English". They also need to say the harder thing, which is that eight of
the nine have never been read by anybody who speaks them.
- README gains the language list, with the Beta caveat in the same line
rather than a footnote.
- FEATURES.md gains an Interface language section: the list, why it is a
separate setting from the date locale, and the two design properties
that follow — a missing entry renders English, and plurals are asked of
Intl.PluralRules rather than assumed, which is why Russian carries
three forms and Japanese one.
- ROADMAP.md no longer lists translations as "not yet". What replaces it
is the half that is genuinely not done: a translation anybody has
checked. RTL is split out as its own entry, because holding Arabic,
Hebrew and Persian back is a layout decision and not a queue position.
- KNOWN-ISSUES.md gains two entries. The unread catalogues, which is the
one thing on that page that cannot be closed by testing. And the
coverage number that read 100% while two hundred strings rendered
English in every language — recorded as a general lesson rather than an
i18n one, since a coverage number measures what it can see and the rest
is exactly what nobody is checking.
ihasmail's mail list was built for a mouse. A row is clicked, right-clicked
and dragged into a folder, and on a touchscreen two of those three do not
exist -- so the phone layout had the shape of a mail app and none of the
handling, and the things people reach for first simply did nothing.
Four gestures, all touch-only, so a mouse keeps drag-to-folder unchanged:
- Swipe a row sideways to act on it. Each direction is a setting -- right
archives and left deletes by default, matching the app the phone came
with -- and the strip revealed behind the row names what will happen in
the folder it is happening in: "Delete forever" out of Deleted Items,
"Not spam" inside Junk Mail, and nothing at all where the action is a
no-op, in which case the row will not move that way.
- Hold a row to select it. Selection was reachable already, by aiming at a
checkbox beside an avatar, which is not how anyone selects mail on a
phone. The selection toolbar gained an overflow menu at the same time:
report spam, mark unread and label were hidden on narrow screens and had
nowhere else to be, so touch selection could not reach them at all.
- Hold a folder for the menu its ⋮ button opens.
- Pull the list down to refresh, and drag in from the left edge of a
conversation to go back. The toolbar's button and arrow both stay: a
gesture with no visible control is one only the people who already know
about it can use.
The arithmetic behind them is in lib/touch.ts, away from the components and
under test, because the numbers are the whole thing: an axis lock biased
towards the vertical, so a diagonal flick stays a scroll rather than
deleting whatever it passes over.
Two layout bugs turned up while checking this on a 390px screen, both
older than the gestures. The app shell is a grid with only its rows named,
so it took an implicit auto column sized to the top bar's min-content --
about 470px -- and every message row ran off the right of the glass with
its date beyond the edge. The column is now stated as minmax(0, 1fr), and
the search field is allowed to shrink. Full-screen surfaces measure in dvh
rather than vh, and the tab bar, drawer and compose button keep out from
under the notch and the home indicator.
The feature list lived in three places that each answered a different question: the site sells it, the docs teach the parts that surprise people, and the README summarises both in a paragraph. Nothing said, in one place and at full detail, what is actually built -- so evaluating ihasmail meant reading the source, and a feature that quietly stopped working had nowhere to be contradicted.
FEATURES.md is that inventory, written from the code rather than the copy: the capability matrix and what each missing one removes, the search operators as the parser actually reads them, the Sieve tests and actions, every settings section and which of them follow the account, the shortcut set, the security posture, and the environment. Where a behaviour is odd it says why, because the reason is usually the stateless constraint.
It also records what the docs had not caught up with: single-occurrence edit and delete are built, and the id renumbering that made them hard is described where someone changing that code will find it.
Both the versioning comment and the README described 1.0 in the past
tense, which reads as though it has shipped and the numbering was
changed in response. It has not. The old `2.16.x` scheme was dropped
over where it would end up, not where it ended up, and the surrounding
conditionals are simplified to match: "would sort", "would read", rather
than "would have".
The badge quoted in the comment also said 0.16.19; it says 0.16.20 now.
Comments and prose only -- no behaviour changes.
INBUXA moved 0.16.19 -> 0.16.20 on 2026-08-31 with eight seconds of
downtime. A 0.16.x -> 0.16.x upgrade is a binary replacement: no data
migration, no config change.
Nothing ihasmail depends on changed. The session capabilities, blob,
quota, submission and registry paths are untouched by the release, and
`urn:stalwart:jmap` is still absent at session level, so the three-place
lookup that sign-in turns on remains both correct and necessary. The
Locale enum did move from POSIX names to BCP-47 (`en_US` -> `en-US`,
`POSIX` dropped), which `normalizeLocale` already handled.
The recurrence entry is rewritten rather than deleted. 0.16.20 added
`CalendarEvent/set` support for synthetic ids, so per-occurrence editing
is a thing the server allows and ihasmail does not do yet (#132) - and
the refusal that used to catch a synthetic id reaching `destroy` is gone,
which is why the base-id resolution wants moving into the store (#133).
Dates on the existing entries are left at 0.16.19 on purpose: they record
what was actually run, and the upgrade was read from the diff, not re-run.
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.
The middle field was the Stalwart generation a build targeted -- 16 for
0.16 -- which leaves nowhere to go when Stalwart reaches 1.0. There is no
honest value for it: 2.1 sorts below the 2.16 already deployed, so every
image and About screen would have read as a downgrade. Tying our
numbering to somebody else's was the mistake, and which Stalwart a build
needs is said properly in the README badge and KNOWN-ISSUES, where it can
be precise rather than one digit.
The version is now the date of the commit it was built from, and the pull
request moves after the + as build metadata. It is provenance rather than
a rank: at the rate they merge here it climbs without bound and says
nothing about how new a build is. Everything after the + is ignored when
versions are compared, which reads correctly -- two builds from the same
day differ in where they came from, not in age -- and nothing depends on
that comparison anyway, since images are pruned by creation time and a
rollback names a git ref.
The date is the commit's own, so rebuilding an old commit gives the
version it had the first time. package.json is no longer the source of
anything and sits at 0.0.0, which is what an unversioned build reports
and is meant to look wrong.
The formatting is a pure function now, so the rules have tests. They had
none while the version was the thing naming every image we ship.
Two lines in the README: the licence statement, and the "by" badge in the
header.
The badge mattered as much as the copyright line. It pointed at
linuxexpert.org, which is now retired -- it 301s its articles to jcoffey.dev
and answers 410 for everything else -- so "by LINUXexpert.org" sent a reader to
a site that no longer claims this work. It now reads "by Coffey Labs" and
points at coffeylabs.org.
Everything else that says LINUXexpert-org is a github.com URL: the source link
baked into .env.example, docker-compose.yml, web/src/lib/source.ts and
server/src/config.ts, plus issue and release links in the docs. Those are the
repository's real path and are unchanged -- the AGPL source offer in the app
depends on that URL resolving.
LICENSE untouched. Its only copyright is the FSF's on the AGPL text itself.
"Gmail-class webmail" describes the client, and every webmail says something
like it. What no other webmail for Stalwart says is that the container has
nothing to persist: one optional write path, and with IMMUTABLE=1 switched on,
no volume and no writable root filesystem at all.
The Gmail comparison still earns its place -- it is what tells someone what the
client feels like to use -- so it stays, one clause later, where it describes
the app rather than the product.
The server writes to one path and no other: SESSION_FILE, from sessions.ts.
Everything else it touches on disk it only reads. So a container with a
read-only root filesystem already works -- except that `VOLUME ["/data"]`
quietly undid it. Docker acts on that directive: a container started without
`-v` gets an anonymous volume mounted there anyway, writable even under
`--read-only`. It persisted nothing across a redeploy, since each new container
got a fresh empty volume, and it left an orphan behind every time one was
replaced. Deployments that want the sessions to survive already say so
themselves -- docker-compose.yml and deploy.example.sh both mount a named
volume -- so removing the line changes nothing for them.
IMMUTABLE=1 asserts that this is how the instance is running. It is checked
rather than believed: the server refuses to start if SESSION_FILE is still set,
or if the filesystem it is installed on turns out to be writable. Left
unchecked the misconfiguration is silent, because persisting sessions is
best-effort -- a read-only /data costs one warning at the first sign-in and
nothing more until the instance is replaced and everyone is signed out.
SessionBackend names what the rest of the server asks of a session store, and
`sessions` in app.ts is typed as it. Nothing changes today; SessionStore is
still the only implementation. It is there so the OAuth work is written against
the interface rather than the class, and so the interface can record which of
its methods a stateless backend could satisfy alone: create, resolve, reseal
and destroy each touch one session, while listForUser and destroyAllForUser
have to reach sessions other than the caller's. The second of those carries the
guarantee that changing a password invalidates the sessions still holding the
old one, which is why it needs a registry -- Stalwart's token registry, once
sign-in goes through OAuth.
Slimming it left no way to try ihasmail without leaving GitHub. Restored in
short form -- the four commands, the 2FA app-password note, and links to the
install and configure guides for TLS and the full environment.
ROADMAP.md's 2FA entry points back at that section again, rather than at the
install docs it was redirected to when the section was gone.
The README had grown to 330 lines and was carrying three audiences at once:
installing, using, and working on ihasmail. docs.ihasmail.org covers the first
two now, and ihasmail.org covers the feature tour, so the README links there
instead of restating them.
- Known issues / pending QA → KNOWN-ISSUES.md, verbatim
- Roadmap / not yet → ROADMAP.md, verbatim (its "see Quick start" pointer now
aims at the install docs, since that section is gone)
- Dropped the env-var table (docs.ihasmail.org/configure/), the shortcut list
(/shortcuts/), the Docker quick start (/install/) and the long feature list
(ihasmail.org/#features), leaving a nav table at the top and a six-line
summary of what's in it
- Kept and tightened what is only true of this tree: architecture, dev
commands, the mock, version numbers, deploying
- Version examples refreshed from 2.16.57 to the current 2.16.84
Settings > Security & sessions still had the full enrolment flow --
QR code, secret, "Set up" -- for something that cannot be signed in
with. Turning 2FA on there took a working account and made webmail
unreachable from any device not already signed in, because ihasmail
has nowhere to send a TOTP code: Stalwart accepts one through an
OAuth flow alone and offers no password grant (#75). The one mercy
was that enabling reseals the current session onto a fresh app
password, so the browser doing it stayed in -- and the next sign-in
elsewhere did not.
So the enrolment path is gone until sign-in with a code works.
Turning 2FA *off* stays. It is a plain registry write, it was
verified live on 0.16.19, and anyone already enrolled -- here or in
Stalwart's own settings -- needs a way back. That control is now the
whole section, and it appears only for an account that has 2FA on;
everyone else no longer sees the heading at all.
The password form keeps its authenticator-code field on the same
condition, since Stalwart demands a code on every credential write
once 2FA is on.
Nothing changes on the server: /api/account/2fa/begin and /enable
are untouched and still tested, ready for the OAuth work that makes
them usable. The sign-in page's code field is also untouched -- it
already explains itself and points at app passwords.
README no longer advertises enrolment by QR code, and the roadmap
entry says which direction the setting still moves.
An account using a unique address per service, on a server with an alias
domain, ends up with every local part twice over and a From picker
nobody can use -- while only ever sending from a handful (#73).
Identities can now be hidden from that picker, from Identities &
signatures. Hiding is presentation only: the identity still exists,
still receives, and stays listed and editable, the way an unsubscribed
folder is still a folder. That framing is mbunkus's own, and it is the
right one -- this is a UI preference, not a change to the account.
Three things it refuses to do, because a sender picker with nothing
usable in it is worse than a cluttered one:
- it will not hide the identity a draft is already using, which would
leave the select with no matching option and move the From line
under the writer
- it will not hide the default, which is what a new draft starts on;
the button is disabled there and says why
- if every identity is somehow hidden -- reachable only through
settings sync, since the UI will not do it -- they are all offered
again
The setting syncs, so the picker looks the same on every device, which
follows from DEVICE_KEYS being a list of exceptions rather than a list
of what travels.
Verified against the mock with four identities and one hidden: the
picker offers the other three, the hidden address is gone from
composing, the default's hide button is disabled, and the row says the
identity still receives.
Signing in with a two-factor code failed with a bare 401 and "Invalid
credentials", which sent the user off to check a password that was
perfectly good (#75). It cannot work, and the app already knew.
Stalwart accepts a TOTP code only through an OAuth flow -- its own web
interface is an OAuth client, which is why signing in *there* succeeds --
and it offers only the authorization-code and device flows. There is no
password grant, so a client holding a username and password has nowhere
to exchange them plus a code for a token. The concatenated
`password$code` form this README claimed was accepted is not a route the
server has, and appears never to have been. What was verified live on
0.16.19 was enabling and disabling 2FA, never signing in with a code.
The contradiction was already in the codebase: turning 2FA *on* mints an
app password and reseals the session onto it, precisely because a plain
password stops working from that moment. The sign-in page was the one
place still assuming otherwise.
Three changes, no new capability:
- A 401 on a sign-in that carried a code now says what is happening
and where to go instead, and says the password is probably fine.
A sign-in without a code is untouched, so an ordinary typo still
reads as an ordinary typo.
- The field stays, and is honest about itself. Removing it would leave
someone with 2FA finding nothing at all, which is worse than finding
a field that explains the situation and points at app passwords.
- The README's claim is corrected rather than quietly dropped, and
real 2FA support is written into the roadmap as what it is: an OAuth
implementation, handing sign-in to Stalwart and holding a refresh
token instead of a sealed password.
Web Push works, confirmed end to end against the live 0.16.19: with
Chrome open and every ihasmail tab closed, a notification arrives
immediately and names the sender and subject.
But "closed" means ihasmail, not the browser, and the switch did not say
so. Web Push is delivered over a connection the browser holds, so
something of it has to be running.
Observed on 2026-08-26, with Chrome fully quit and "Continue running
background apps" off: nothing arrived until Chrome was started again, at
which point the queued notification was delivered. Turning that setting
on keeps a process alive and restores immediate delivery.
Worth knowing that the queue is not indefinite -- a Web Push message
carries a TTL, and one that expires before the browser comes back is
dropped rather than delivered late. Being an installed PWA does not
change any of this on a desktop; it changes the window, not who holds
the connection. On Android it would, since the push service can wake the
browser from cold.
None of this is ihasmail's to fix. It is what Web Push is, and the only
thing worth doing about it is not implying otherwise -- which the
notification switch was quietly doing.
ihasmail's notifications came from EventSource, which lives exactly as
long as a tab does -- so "desktop notifications" has always quietly
meant "while you are looking". That switch is now labelled as much, and
a second one does the thing people assumed the first one did.
Stalwart 0.16 signs Web Push with VAPID (RFC 9749) and can put the
message itself in the payload (draft-ietf-jmap-emailpush). The server
pushes straight to the browser's own push service: ihasmail's server is
not in the delivery path, there is no relay to run, and nothing beyond
the browser vendor's endpoint that Web Push requires of everyone.
Checked against the live 0.16.19 before any of this was written, because
an advertised capability is not a configured one:
- the session publishes a real applicationServerKey, so no key
generation or server configuration is needed
- PushSubscription/get answers an ordinary user rather than refusing
- emailpush is advertised, and its draft defines a filter, an ordered
properties list and an urgency -- so the payload can carry sender and
subject, and the server drops properties from the end when it will
not fit rather than failing the notification
Three things this gets right that are easy to get wrong:
- The verification handshake. A JMAP subscription delivers nothing
until the client echoes back a code the server pushed, and the
service worker cannot answer it -- no credentials in that context.
It forwards the code to a tab, or leaves it in the cache when no tab
was open to forward it to.
- Key encoding. The W3C Push API produces unpadded base64url and
Stalwart 0.16 was fixed to accept exactly that, so nothing here pads
on the way out. The VAPID key needs padding on the way *in* for
atob; getting that backwards fails at subscribe() with an opaque
error, so it lives in one named function with tests.
- Sign-out. A subscription belongs to the account, not the session.
Without tearing it down, a shared machine keeps notifying for a
mailbox nobody is signed into -- which is somebody else's mail.
The mock models the JMAP half, including refusing padded keys and
non-https endpoints, and creating subscriptions *unverified*. Delivery
cannot be mocked -- it runs through the browser vendor's real push
service -- but a mock that marked a subscription verified on creation
would let a client ship without the handshake, and the symptom in
production is "registered, and silent".
Not verified end to end: an actual notification arriving. That needs a
real browser, a real push service and real delivery, so it is live
testing or nothing.
Every deploy tags an image with its version, which is what makes a
rollback a `docker run` rather than a rebuild -- and what has quietly
put 7.7 GB of them on the host, 4.3 GB of it reclaimable. `docker image
prune` will not help: they are tagged, which is the whole point of them.
The script that creates them now removes them, keeping the newest
IHASMAIL_KEEP_VERSIONS (three by default, 0 to keep everything).
Two things it is careful about, both learned from what could go wrong
rather than from something that did:
- it runs only after the new container reports healthy, so a rollback
target is never dropped while the thing meant to replace it is still
unproven.
- it excludes the image the container is actually running, by asking
docker what that is rather than assuming it sorts newest. After a
rollback it does not: the running image is an old one, and naive
keep-the-newest-N would delete the image in use. Docker would refuse,
but being refused is not the same as not having tried.
Exercised against a stubbed docker on PATH, so the pipeline and xargs
are the real ones: keeps 3 and removes the oldest, keeps 1 and removes
three, keeps everything at 0, never lists :current, and spares the
running image in a rollback where it is the fourth-newest.
Also records delete-all-spam as confirmed live on 0.16.19 today: Junk
Mail emptied and Deleted Items stayed empty afterwards, which is the
half a mock cannot prove and the half the feature exists for.
Junk Mail can now be emptied in one action, the way every other mail
client offers it: a banner across the top of the folder, and an item in
both the folder's right-click menu and the list's own menu.
The messages are destroyed rather than moved to Deleted Items. Routing
spam through the bin on its way out leaves you with the same problem in
a different folder, and "delete all spam" means gone everywhere else. So
the dialog says it before you commit, and there is no undo.
emptyMailbox already did the hard part -- walking a folder a page at a
time so it survives maxObjectsInSet, which a Deleted Items of 5192 once
did not. All that changed is which folders it will accept. The guard
stays in the store rather than living only in the menus, so a fourth
caller cannot empty the Inbox by asking nicely.
The three entry points share one helper, because three dialogs warning
about a permanent deletion in three slightly different ways is how one
of them ends up not warning at all. A folder with nothing in it offers
the item greyed out rather than hiding it, so it is where you expect it
to be next time.
Folder naming is fixed in the same commit because it changed the same
file, and because testing this is what surfaced it. Two problems, one
cause:
- The mock called its folders "Trash" and "Sent". Stalwart's defaults
follow the Exchange convention -- "Deleted Items", "Sent Items" --
so anything built from a folder's name read differently against the
mock than against a real server, and every screenshot in the README
showed a folder list no user has.
- Worse, and in shipping code: the undo toast took a hardcoded label
in preference to the folder's actual name, so deleting a message
announced "moved to Trash" on a server whose folder is called
"Deleted Items", and reporting spam said "moved to Spam" where it is
"Junk Mail". The one message whose job is saying where mail went was
naming somewhere that does not exist. It now prefers the mailbox's
own name and keeps the hardcoded word only as a fallback.
Verified against the mock: the banner appears only in Junk and only with
something to delete, the dialog counts and pluralises, the messages are
destroyed and Deleted Items stays empty afterwards, the banner
disappears once the folder is, the item greys out when empty, Archive is
offered neither, and Trash still says "Empty Deleted Items".
A dark theme carrying ihasmail.org's palette: a teal-navy ground rather
than the blue-slate of the plain dark theme, with the orange the logo's
cat is drawn in doing the work of the star and the warning colour. The
values are the site's own, read from its stylesheet rather than picked
by eye.
It is a theme rather than an accent because it changes backgrounds,
borders and text as well as the highlight -- an accent could not.
It rides on data-theme="dark" and adds data-palette="ihasmail" on top,
so the eleven dark-only rules further down the stylesheet keep applying
without being duplicated for a second dark theme. Specificity then does
something deliberate: the palette block is 0,2,0 and the accent variants
are 0,3,0, so a chosen accent still wins over it -- and because the
default accent ("teal") has no rule of its own, ihasmail.org's accent is
what shows until someone picks another. Verified both ways in a browser.
It is now what a new account starts on, so the app looks like itself
before anyone has chosen anything. Only a default: a stored theme always
wins, which leaves everyone already using ihasmail where they are, since
the setting is saved whether or not they deliberately picked it.
While here, the theme-color meta tag was fixed. There were two, both
carrying media attributes, and applyTheme looks for
:not([media]) -- so it matched neither and the browser chrome had never
followed the chosen theme at all, only what the OS preferred. One tag
now, updated from JS, starting at the default theme's background so the
first paint is right too.
Contrast measured rather than assumed, against the theme's own
background: text 14.5:1, muted 8.6:1, faint 6.4:1, accent 8.0:1, link
9.8:1, star 7.9:1, accent-on-accent 8.4:1. All AA or better.
jcoffey-dev
Coffey Labs