Running Postal on Raspberry Pi's and Kubernetes

[armourshield]

Hi Everyone,

With the requirements for Postal being satisfied by Raspberry Pi 4B 8GB RAM. It will be great to run the server out of arm7 32bit Pi OS making ideal for enthusiast and people having spare Pi's at home to have a feel for Postal.

With Kubernetes installation like K3s on arm7 system, it will be great to run this on Kubernetes as well.

But docker-compose with docker images for arm7 will be a great thing.

I am currently trying to build the postal ruby image for arm7. For other images I am using this https://hub.docker.com/r/yobasystems/alpine-mariadb for Mariadb on Pi, RabbitMq has a image for arm7.

Both Mariadb and RabbitMq works out of the box.

This will be great if it is part of the roadmap for Postal.

[willpower232]

Someone mentioned this on the slack the other day, it looks like there are ruby arm images but only in github, not dockerhub

https://github.com/ruby/ruby-docker-images/pkgs/container/ruby

If you have the time, knowledge, and Pi's to test on then some more information would be great.

[armourshield]

I have created a test rig, created other pre requisite. Will be working on the image for ruby over the weekend. Thanks for the link as well.

[blaazetech]

Any luck with creating an postal image for arm64v8???

[armourshield]

not yet, got to work on it for few hours. I have created an image that builds on the arch. Need to iron out few things. Will let you know

[armourshield]

Test Rig Info

System: Raspberry Pi 4, 8GB, 32GB Mem
OS: Official Raspberry Pi OS (32 BIT) from Raspberry Pi Imager

  `.::///+:/-.        --///+//-:``
 `+oooooooooooo:   `+oooooooooooo:
  /oooo++//ooooo:  ooooo+//+ooooo.
  `+ooooooo:-:oo-  +o+::/ooooooo:
   `:oooooooo+``    `.oooooooo+-
     `:++ooo/.        :+ooo+/.`       pi
        ...`  `.----.` ``..           ------------------- 
     .::::-``:::::::::.`-:::-`        OS: Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) armv7l 
    -:::-`   .:::::::-`  `-:::-       Host: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.4 
   `::.  `.--.`  `` `.---.``.::`      Kernel: 5.10.17-v7l+ 
       .::::::::`  -::::::::` `       Uptime: 27 days, 10 hours, 58 mins 
 .::` .:::::::::- `::::::::::``::.    Packages: 2066 (dpkg) 
-:::` ::::::::::.  ::::::::::.`:::-   Shell: bash 5.0.3 
::::  -::::::::.   `-::::::::  ::::   CPU: BCM2711 (4) @ 1.500GHz 
-::-   .-:::-.``....``.-::-.   -::-   Memory: 1350MiB / 7875MiB 
 .. ``       .::::::::.     `..`..
   -:::-`   -::::::::::`  .:::::`                             
   :::::::` -::::::::::` :::::::.
   .:::::::  -::::::::. ::::::::
    `-:::::`   ..--.`   ::::::.
      `...`  `...--..`  `...`
            .::::::::::
             `.-::::-`

DEV:

Init:

1. I have cloned the repository and duplicated the Dockerfile as Dockerfile.arm for testing.
2. I used already existing ruby [arch (arm32v7l)] docker image from the Dockerhub
   https://hub.docker.com/r/arm32v7/ruby/ as base image.
3. As the base image which is ruby:2.6 supports all architecture. I wanted to make sure we can do as little as changes possible if we can integrate all the platforms.

New Image DEV:

1. The libmariadbclient-dev was the first one that needed to be resolved, changed to use packages from Debian security.
2. During install of libmariadbclient-dev needed to install its dependency of libmariadbclient18 (THIS CAN BE IMPROVED)
3. setcap command was not found in the base image, hence installed libcap2-bin for setcap
4. There was a user permission issue on Gemfile.lock so copied with the postal user as permission in Dockerfile.

This is the current image, I am thinking about forking the repo and pushing the changes there.

FROM arm32v7/ruby:2.6 AS base

SHELL ["/bin/bash", "-o", "pipefail", "-c"]
RUN apt-get update \
  && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
  software-properties-common \
  && apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xF1656F24C74CD1D8 \
  && add-apt-repository 'deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main' \
  && (curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | apt-key add -) \
  && (echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list) \
  && (curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | bash -) \
  && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# Install main dependencies
RUN apt-get update && \
  apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
  build-essential  \
  netcat \
  curl \
  nano \
  nodejs

RUN apt-get install -y libmariadbclient18 libmariadbclient-dev libcap2-bin

RUN setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' /usr/local/bin/ruby

# Configure 'postal' to work everywhere (when the binary exists
# later in this process)
ENV PATH="/opt/postal/app/bin:${PATH}"

# Setup an application
RUN useradd -r -d /opt/postal -m -s /bin/bash -u 999 postal
USER postal
RUN mkdir -p /opt/postal/app /opt/postal/config
WORKDIR /opt/postal/app

# Install bundler
RUN gem install bundler -v 2.1.4 --no-doc

# Install the latest and active gem dependencies and re-run
# the appropriate commands to handle installs.
COPY --chown=postal Gemfile Gemfile.lock ./
RUN bundle install -j 4

# Copy the application (and set permissions)
COPY ./docker/wait-for.sh /docker-entrypoint.sh
COPY --chown=postal . .

# Export the version
ARG VERSION=unspecified
RUN echo $VERSION > VERSION

# Set the path to the config
ENV POSTAL_CONFIG_ROOT=/config

# Set the CMD
ENTRYPOINT [ "/docker-entrypoint.sh" ]
CMD ["postal"]

# ci target - use --target=ci to skip asset compilation
FROM base AS ci

# prod target - default if no --target option is given
FROM base AS prod

RUN POSTAL_SKIP_CONFIG_CHECK=1 RAILS_GROUPS=assets bundle exec rake assets:precompile
RUN touch /opt/postal/app/public/assets/.prebuilt

4. I got an image in the Docker registry for arm32v7l [NOT WORKING YET].

Docker image

docker pull armourshield/postal:latest-arm

Current Status:

Getting few errors while initializing, not familiar with ruby env's so will figure this out and continue to see what I can do

postal initialize

If anyone knows what I can do here, please do share :). Many thinks will continue to work on this.

[blaazetech]

Hi

Any luck?

[armourshield]

Hi @blaazetech ,

I was able to get it running, I have pushed it to the same docker image I will post the instructions in the below comment. Please let me know if you have any issues. I will push the same to the forked repo.

[armourshield]

Currently, this image is working in armourshield/postal:latest-arm in RaspberryPi OS (32-bit)

postal status

      Name                     Command               State   Ports
------------------------------------------------------------------
postal_cron_1       /docker-entrypoint.sh post ...   Up           
postal_requeuer_1   /docker-entrypoint.sh post ...   Up           
postal_smtp_1       /docker-entrypoint.sh post ...   Up           
postal_web_1        /docker-entrypoint.sh post ...   Up           
postal_worker_1     /docker-entrypoint.sh post ...   Up

---

Instruction for running in arm32v7

Prerequisites

NOTE: Change credentials for security

Running MySQL with the following command

docker run -d --name postal-mariadb -p 3306:3306 -v /var/lib/mysql:/var/lib/mysql --restart always -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=root yobasystems/alpine-mariadb:10.4.17

docker run -d --name postal-rabbitmq -p 5672:5672 --restart always -e RABBITMQ_DEFAULT_USER=postal -e RABBITMQ_DEFAULT_PASS=root -e RABBITMQ_DEFAULT_VHOST=postal rabbitmq:3.8.10-management-alpine

Installing Postal using new ARM32v7 image

You can follow most of the instructions from the official page (Installation Page - Postal)[https://docs.postalserver.io/install/installation]

The major change will be changing the image name in docker-compose.yaml.

1. Initialize files for postal

postal bootstrap postal.yourdomain.com

2. Change image for postalhq to armourshield/postal:latest-arm in /opt/postal/install/docker-compose.yaml

3. Setup all the credentials for DB, MQTT in /opt/postal/config/postal.yaml

4. Initialize DB

postal initialize

5. Create User

postal make-user

6. Run Postal

postal start

7. You can follow the other reverse-proxy instruction from the official documentation.

---

Please let me know if you find any issues. I am yet to test the complete functionality. This is currently working in my setup. If you need a build for arm64. I will push it to the same docker repository.

Many thanks for your patience

[armourshield]

The docker image is in the forked repo, it is not perfect but it still uses the same image used for amd64. Making it easy for compatibility with the main image. Not tested that yet.