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:
- Get sqlite3 development libs:
sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev
; - Got ruby? Install mailcatcher:
sudo gem install mailcatcher
; - 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:
- Create a new Apache “site”, let’s say “
/etc/apache2/sites-available/35-mailcatcher.conf
“; - 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>
- On your host machine update
/etc/hosts
file with this line (replace%GUEST_IP%
with your Vagrant box IP address):%GUEST_IP% mailcatcher.local
- Enable mailcatcher site with a2ensite command, enable proxy module with
a2enmod proxy_http
command and restart apache; - 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]