You have probably heard of Mailcatcher already. It’s a great piece of software that implements neat idea.
I am using Vagrant and Apache on Debian, so my development box is build using puphpet.com. It allows mailcatcher installation btw, but we’ll do it manually and with a step forward:

1. Get sqlite3 development libs: sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev;
2. Got ruby? Install mailcatcher: sudo gem install mailcatcher;
3. Now, let’s make it running after box restart:
• Create /etc/init.d/mailcatcher script with this code:

  #! /bin/sh
  
  ### BEGIN INIT INFO
  # Provides:          mailcatcher
  # Required-Start:    $all
  # Required-Stop:     $network
  # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
  # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
  # Short-Description: Start daemon at boot time
  # Description:       Enable service provided by daemon.
  ### END INIT INFO
  
  PID_FILE=/var/run/mailcatcher.pid
  NAME=mailcatcher
  PROG=/usr/local/bin/mailcatcher
  USER=mailcatcher
  GROUP=mailcatcher
   
  start() {
  	echo -n "Starting MailCatcher"
  	if start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile $PID_FILE --signal 0
  	then
  		echo " already running."
  		exit
  	fi
  	start-stop-daemon \
  		--start \
  		--pidfile $PID_FILE \
  		--make-pidfile \
  		--background \
  		--exec $PROG \
  		--user $USER \
  		--group $GROUP \
  		--chuid $USER \
  		-- \
  		--foreground
  	echo "."
  	return $?
  }
   
  stop() {
  	echo -n "Stopping MailCatcher"
  	start-stop-daemon \
  		--stop \
  		--oknodo \
  		--pidfile $PID_FILE
  	echo "."
  	return $?
  }
   
  restart() {
  	stop
  	start
  }
   
  case "$1" in
  	start)
  		start
  		;;
  	stop)
  		stop
  		;;
  	restart)
  		restart
  		;;
  	*)
  		echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
  		exit 1
  		;;
  esac
  

• Make the script executable: sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/mailcatcher;
• Create the user: sudo adduser mailcatecher;
• Add the script for upstart: update-rc.d mailcatcher enable;

Ok, so mailcatcher will run at startup, but will not be visible at host machine. Now, you can do it just by forwarding guest’s 1080 port to host’s 1080 port using Vagrant config. But it didn’t work for me for no apparent reason. And i am not a big fan of typing in port numbers into browser address bar. So next steps will solve that:

1. Create a new Apache “site”, let’s say “/etc/apache2/sites-available/35-mailcatcher.conf“;
2. Let’s use Apache proxy module to let us access to mailcatcher (on port 80). Add this to the newly created “site” file:

   <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName mailcatcher.local
        ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:1080/
        ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:1080/
   </VirtualHost>
   

3. On your host machine update /etc/hosts file with this line (replace %GUEST_IP% with your Vagrant box IP address):

   %GUEST_IP% mailcatcher.local
   

4. Enable mailcatcher site with a2ensite command, enable proxy module with a2enmod proxy_http command and restart apache;
5. Point your browser to http://mailcatcher.local and your should see mailcatcher interface.

If you see 503 error, it’s probably because mailcatcher did not start.

Oh, yes, refer to the manual on how to add support to your language of choice. For PHP it’s simple:

; php.ini
sendmail_path = /usr/bin/env catchmail -f [email protected]