docker-email-autoconfig

Provenance. This is a maintained fork of damianmoore/docker-email-autoconfig (upstream last pushed February 2018). MDAPI carries Alpine + Python base-image bumps, IMAPS-by-default in the autoconfig.xml template, and a daily CVE-scan CI pipeline. Image at ghcr.io/MDAPI-Repos/autoconfig (sources at github.com/MDAPI-Repos/autoconfig).

When adding email accounts to a client like Thunderbird, a HTTP query is made to a subdomain of the email addres to see if there is a description for how to connect for sending and receiving. This server hosts the configuration file and can can do so for multiple domains at a time.

More information about the email autoconfiguration format and how it is accessed can be read here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Thunderbird/Autoconfiguration

The server provides an XML file of server details hosted like http://autoconfig.example.com/mail/config-v1.1.xml.

You will need to provide these environment variables: MAIL_HOSTNAME, DISPLAY_NAME, DISPLAY_SHORT_NAME.

You will need to configure your DNS to handle the subdomain and your reverse proxy to forward on requests to this server.

Docker-compose

Here is a sample docker-compose.yml to start the service.

services:
  autoconfig:
    container_name: autoconfig
    image: damianmoore/docker-email-autoconfig
    restart: always
    environment:
      MAIL_HOSTNAME: mail.example.com
      DISPLAY_NAME: Example.com Mail
      DISPLAY_SHORT_NAME: Example.com

Nginx

Every domain with the subdomain autoconfig. can be proxied at once to this service with something like the following.

server {
  listen                    80;
  server_name               autoconfig.*;

  location / {
    proxy_pass              http://autoconfig;
    proxy_http_version      1.1;
    proxy_set_header        Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header        Connection "upgrade";
    proxy_set_header        Host $http_host;
    proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-Host $http_host;
    proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header        Proxy "";
    proxy_redirect          off;
  }
}