Mail Piler Docker Container

Description

This Docker deployment runs mariadb and Mail Piler with all its dependencies in a single container.

Delault login credentials are as follows

admin@local
pilerrocks

Web-UI is accesible under port 80. (mostly http://localhost)

Usage via plain docker cli

run the following command but edit your environment variables first:

docker run -d \
  --name=mail-piler \
  -e TZ=Europe/Berlin \
  -e PILER_RETENTION=3650 \
  -e PILER_HOST=piler.yourdomain.com \
  -e MYSQL_DATABASE=piler \
  -e MYSQL_USER=piler-db-user \
  -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=piler123 \
  -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=enter-very-secure-root-pw \
  -p 80:80 \
  -p 443:443 \
  -p 25:25 \
  -v piler-data-store:/var/piler/store/00 \
  -v piler-data-sphinx:/var/piler/sphinx \
  -v piler-data-config:/etc/piler \
  -v piler-data-mariadb:/var/lib/mysql \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  fabianbees/mail-piler:latest

⚠️⚠️ IMPORTANT: Bind-Mounts are currently not supported, so you have to use Docker volumes!! ⚠️⚠️

Usage via docker-compose

First create a .env file to substitute variables for your deployment.

Required environment variables

Docker Environment Var	Description
PILER_RETENTION	Retention time
PILER_HOST	Piler FQDN
MYSQL_DATABASE	MariaDB database name
MYSQL_USER	MariaDB database user
MYSQL_PASSWORD	MariaDB database pw
MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD	MariaDB root pw

Example .env file in the same directory as your docker-compose.yaml file:

PILER_RETENTION=3650
PILER_HOST=piler.yourdomain.com
MYSQL_DATABASE=piler
MYSQL_USER=piler-db-user
MYSQL_PASSWORD=piler123
MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=enter-very-secure-root-pw

Running the stack with docker compose

docker-compose up -d

If using Portainer, just paste the docker-compose.yaml contents into the stack config and add your environment variables directly in the UI.

Database Upgrade (manual step!)

The mail-piler container must be stopped during this operation !!!

If you get an error that your database needs to be upgraded, you must do this manually by the following steps:

1. Run the database with the old database image and shut it down gracefully:

for example:

docker run -d \
  --name=db-upgrade \
  -e MYSQL_DATABASE=piler \
  -e MYSQL_USER=piler-db-user \
  -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=piler123 \
  -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=enter-very-secure-root-pw \
  -v piler-data-mariadb:/var/lib/mysql \
  mariadb:10.6-focal

2. After the gracefull shutdown the new image can be used with the parameter -e MARIADB_AUTO_UPGRADE=true. This starts an automatic update. After that shutdown this temporary container and you can restart the mail-piler container.

for example:

docker run -d \
  --name=db-upgrade \
  -e MYSQL_DATABASE=piler \
  -e MYSQL_USER=piler-db-user \
  -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=piler123 \
  -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=enter-very-secure-root-pw \
  -v piler-data-mariadb:/var/lib/mysql \
  -e MARIADB_AUTO_UPGRADE=true \
  mariadb:10.10-jammy