Introduction

sendmail2mailgun is a bash script handling sendmail input to send mails over Mailgun's HTTP API. It can be a useful alternative ...

• if the usual mailing infrastructure is not available or desirable, f.ex. in containerized environments
• to avoid the hassle of mail client configuration and mail log monitoring

sendmail2mailgun just needs a keyfile with the API key for the Mailgun account and it's ready to go. Mailgun's API gives the advantage to have a definitive return status: a successful request is guaranteed to lead to a mail delivery attempt - hence, if it's used with known recipients where mail bounces are not a problem (f.ex. system notifications to a set of admin email adresses), it can be used without further monitoring.

The sendmail format encodes the mail variables as <key>:<value> headers, with everything else beeing the mail body:

From: <Identity>[email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: This is a mail
This is the mail body.

sendmail2mailgun expects it as piped input:

printf "From: ...\nTo: ...\nSubject:...\nMail body" | sendmail2mailgun

To log into the Mailgun API, sendmail2mailgun needs the domain and key. For security reasons the key can't be a runtime parameter (visibility in the logs), it has to be provided through a file.

The formal usage description is:

... | sendmail2mailgun [flags] [recipient_string]

where the optional recipient_string is a email address or a comma separated list of several email addresses. Flags are explained in the dedicated section.

Configuration

sendmail2mailgun's configuration options are:

• Mailgun API account settings: domain + key
• Log filepath and logging levels
• Mailing defaults: sender, recipient(s), subject
• cURL timeouts: globally and for connection setup

sendmail2mailgun is able to work in two different modes:

• the "configuration file less" (called runtime) mode: the only file used is the keyfile for the Mailgun API account. The flags --domain <domain> --keyfile <filepath> are compulsory. The keyfile should contain the Mailgun API key without any decoration.
• the normal file-based mode, with a global configuration file and possible further ramifications

The default mode can be selected at installation time (install.sh, see How To). This can be overwritten at runtime with:

• --cfg <filepath> to switch to normal mode and read filepath as global configuration file
• --cfg "" to switch to runtime mode

File-based configuration

To be able to adapt the file-based configuration easily to different contexts and/or several Mailgun API accounts, the global configuration may be extended with usecase configurations. These replicate and overwrite the global configuration and add a usecase name which can be useful in log analytics. Likewise, in case several Mailgun API accounts are (re)used accross the different configuration files, these may stored in dedicated files and addressed by name.

Every configuration file type is explained in detail below, templates may be found here

Global configuration

The path of the global configuration file is determined by, in order of precendence:

• the --cfg <filepath> runtime flag
• the default path set on installation if a file-based configuration was chosen

A global configuration may define:

• mailgun_domain and mailgun_api_key
• log_filepath and log_level
• default_sender, default_recipient_string, default_subject
• curl_connection_timeout and curl_timeout
• usecase_configurations_folder
• mailgun_api_account_configurations_folder

usecase_configurations_folder and mailgun_api_account_configurations_folder are used to locate the respective configuration files, explained in the sections below.

Usecase configurations

The filepath of a usecase configuration file is determined by, in order of precedence:

• the --uc-cfg <filepath> runtime flag
• the --uc <name> runtime flag - in this case, the filepath is <name>.conf inside the usecase_configurations_folder defined in the global configuration file
• if usecase_configurations_folder is defined and there's only a single .conf file in it, this one is used

A usecase configuration file may define:

• name: useful for log analytics if a single global log is used
• mailgun_domain and mailgun_api_key or mailgun_api_account_name in case Mailgun API account configurations are used
• log_filepath and log_level
• default_sender, default_recipient_string, default_subject
• curl_connection_timeout and curl_timeout

Mailgun API account configurations

The filepath of a Mailgun API account configuration file is determined by, in order precedence

• the --mg-cfg <filepath> runtime flag
• if a usecase configuration specifies a mailgun_api_account_name and the global configuration defines a mailgun_api_account_configurations_folder, the path is <mailgun_api_account_name>.conf in that folder
• if mailgun_api_account_configurations_folder is defined and there's only a single .conf file in it, this one is used

A Mailgun API account configuration should define:

• domain
• key

Flags

The part of sendmail2mailgun --help about flags:

--cfg <filepath>            Global configuration filepath
--domain <domain>           Mailgun API account domain
--help                      Print this message and quit
--html                      HTML mail body (default: text)
--keyfile <filepath>        Mailgun API account key filepath
--log-file <filepath>       Log filepath
--log-level <level>         Level for file logging
--mg-cfg <filepath>         Mailgun API account configuration filepath
--test                      Enable test mode
--uc-cfg <filepath>         Usecase configuration filepath
--uc <name>                 Name of the usecase configuration
-v                          Enable stdout logging, level 1
--vv                        Enable stdout logging, level 2

Logging

sendmail2mailgun provides fully configurable logging capabilities. It's able to handle stdout and file logging each with their own logging level.

By default, stdout logging is disabled (stdout_log_level set to 0) and file logging is disabled as long as no log_filepath is set. log_level defaults to 1. Have a look at the internals, section "Logging", to see the different ways this can be configured.

Internals

An overview of the internal parameter set and how the configurations apply - by order of precedence:

Mail

• sender / recipient / subject:
  • extracted from the sendmail input (the details, especially regarding multiple recipients, are given here
  • default_<x>, where x is sender / recipient_string / subject, from a usecase configuration
  • default_<x> from the global configuration
• mail_body: extracted from the sendmail input
• mail_uses_html_body: defaults to 0/false for a text body. Enable with the flag --html

Mailgun API account

• domain
  • --domain <domain>
  • domain in a Mailgun account configuration
  • mailgun_api_account_domain in the usecase configuration
  • mailgun_api_account_domain in the global configuration
• api_key
  • content of the file referenced by --keyfile <filepath>
  • key in a Mailgun account configuration
  • mailgun_api_account_key in the usecase configuration
  • mailgun_api_account_key in the global configuration

Configuration filepaths

• configuration_filepath: explained in the dedicated section
• usecase_configuration_filepath: explained in the dedicated section
• mailgun_api_account_configuration_filepath: explained in the dedicated section

Logging

• log_filepath:
  • --log-file <filepath> flag
  • log_filepath in the usecase configuration
  • log_filepath in the global configuration
• log_level: defaults to 1 (normal logging)
  • --log-level <level> flag
  • log_level in the usecase configuration
  • log_level in the global configuration
• stdout_log_level: defaults to 0/disabled. The flag -v sets it to 1, -vv to 2

cURL settings

• curl_connection_timeout
  • curl_connection_timeout in the usecase configuration
  • curl_connection_timeout in the global configuration
• curl_timeout
  • curl_timeout in the usecase configuration
  • curl_timeout in the global configuration

Sendmail format processing details | Multiple recipients

sendmail2mailgun looks at the beginning of the piped input, line by line, as long as it finds header matches. As soon as there's no match, that line and any subsequent ones are considered to be the mail's body. If there's more than one From and/or Subject headers, the last one (higher line number) will prevail. Multiple To headers are cumulated to build a comma separated email address list. The To headers themselves can be such lists. Recipients provided on the CLI (last parameter recipient_string) and those provided as sendmail headers are aggregated; there's no duplicate check.

How To

• clone this repository
• decide which configuration mode you wish to use (see the configuration section for details)
• create either:
  • a file with the Mailgun API key written into it. The key can be found in the Mailgun web interface. This allows to run sendmail2mailgun just with --domain <domain> --keyfile <filepath> flags, no further configuration (files) needed
  • a global configuration (template provided in configuration_templates/global.conf
• protect this file (and any other with API keys) with appropriate permissions

Keyfile

• run installer.sh, it will just check dependancies and give a few advices

Global configuration

• run installer.sh path/to/config.file and follow the instructions on screen

TODO

• implement tests
• improve installer

License

Written in 2018 by DonTseTse.

Licensed under the LGPL, Version 3.0