building5/ses-relay repository overview

⁠ses-relay

⁠Supported tags and respective Dockerfile links

• latest, 1, 1.0, 1.0.1 (Dockerfile)⁠
• devel (Dockerfile)⁠

A Docker⁠ container designed to work well as an SMTP relay for SES⁠. If you provide it with an SMTP_USERNAME and SMTP_PASSWORD, and run it on an EC2 instance, it will automagically relay any emails it receives to the SES server in its region.

⁠Basic usage

The ses-relay container assumes that it's running on an Amazon EC2 instance, but you can specifically provide AWS_REGION if you are running it elsewhere.

It also assumes that you want to use it from other Docker containers. If you want to use it from other networks, you can provide DC_RELAY_NETS.

# Create a data container for the mail spool
$ docker run --name ses-relay-data -v /data/ses-relay busybox true
# Run the ses-relay container
$ docker run --name ses-relay \
    -e SMTP_USERNAME=xxx \
    -e SMTP_PASSWORD=xxx \
    --volumes-from ses-relay-data \
    building5/ses-relay

While using the data container is optional, it's highly recommended, so that you can delete, recreate or upgrade the ses-relay container, if needed.

To use the relay from the host, you should add --expose localhost:25:25 to the docker run command.

To use the relay to other containers, add --link ses-relay when starting your container. Your container can then reach the relay at the hostname ses-relay.

⁠Environment

• SMTP_USERNAME (required) - Amazon SES user name.
• SMTP_PASSWORD (required) - Amazon SES password. This is different from the IAM password⁠, so be sure you generate the right password.
• AWS_REGION - AWS region for the SES server. Defaults to the region of the instance.
• DC_RELAY_NETS - Networks to relay email for. Defaults to the Docker network⁠.

⁠Ports

• 25 - SMTP port.

⁠Volumes

• /var/spool/exim4 - Spool directory for outgoing emails. It is recommended that you mount this in order for the email spool to survive reloading the container.

⁠Other info

This uses exim⁠ as the SMTP relay, but that is just an implementation detail that shouldn't affect the usage of the container.