A fast, highly extensible, and event driven SMTP server
Haraka is a highly scalable node.js email server with a modular plugin architecture. Haraka can serve thousands of concurrent connections and deliver thousands of messages per second. Haraka and plugins are written in asynchronous JS and are very fast.
Haraka has very good spam protection (see plugins) and works well as a filtering MTA. It also works well as a MSA running on port 587 with auth and dkim_sign plugins enabled.
Haraka makes no attempt to be a mail store (like Exchange or Postfix/Exim/Qmail), a LDA, nor an IMAP server (like Dovecot or Courier). Haraka is typically used with such systems.
Haraka has a scalable outbound mail delivery engine built in. Mail marked as
relaying(such as via an
authplugin) is automatically queued for outbound delivery.
Haraka's plugin architecture provides an easily extensible MTA that complements traditional MTAs that excel at managing mail stores but do not have sufficient filtering.
The plugin system makes it easy to code new features. A typical example is providing qmail-like extended addresses to an Exchange system, whereby you could receive mail as
[email protected], and yet still have it correctly routed to
[email protected]. This is a few lines of code in Haraka.
Plugins are provided for running mail through SpamAssassin, validating HELO names, checking DNS Blocklists, and many others.
Haraka requires node.js to run. Install Haraka with npm:
# If the second command gives "nobody" errors, uncomment & run the next command # npm -g config set user root npm install -g Haraka
After installation, use the
harakabinary to set up the service.
First, create the service:
haraka -i /path/to/haraka_test
That creates the directory
haraka_testwith
configand
plugindirectories within. It also sets the host name used by Haraka to the output of
hostname.
If
hostnameis not correct, edit
config/host_list. For example, to receive mail addressed to
[email protected], add
domain.comto the
config/host_listfile.
Finally, start Haraka using root permissions:
haraka -c /path/to/haraka_test
And it will run.
To choose which plugins run, edit
config/plugins. Plugins control the overall behaviour of Haraka. By default, only messages to domains listed in
config/host_listwill be accepted and then delivered via the
smtp-forwardplugin. Configure the destination in
config/smtp_forward.ini.
haraka -h plugins/$name
The docs detail how each plugin is configured. After editing
config/plugins, restart Haraka and enjoy!
If you are unable to use npm to install Haraka, you can run from git by following these steps:
First clone the repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/haraka/Haraka.git $ cd Haraka
Install Haraka's node.js dependencies locally:
$ npm install
Edit
config/pluginsand
config/smtp.inito specify the plugins and config you want.
Finally run Haraka:
$ node haraka.js
Haraka is MIT licensed - see the LICENSE file for details.
Haraka is a project started by Matt Sergeant, a 10 year veteran of the email and anti-spam world. Previous projects have been the project leader for SpamAssassin and a hacker on Qpsmtpd.