DavMail Monit HowTo

I recently started to monitor my servers with monit. As such, I started creating scripts for all services that needed monitoring until I got stuck on one of them DavMail. It did not write a pid file and didn’t even had a specific process name!

This HowTo is meant to run on an ubuntu/debian system.

I started googling for a solution and it was not easy. The problem was with java not allowing or providing a way to change the process name of a jvm.

The solution I found was Java Service Wrapper and bellow are the steps on how to use it.

First of all, download the debian DavMail package:

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wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/davmail/files/davmail/3.8.8/davmail_3.8.8-1608-1_all.deb/download \
  -O davmail_3.8.8-1608-1_all.deb

Since this is to be installed on a headless server, we need to remove some of the dependencies of the package:

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dpkg -e davmail_3.8.8-1608-1_all.deb

Now you’ll have a DEBIAN directory, cd into it:

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cd DEBIAN

Now edit the control file:

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vi control

Delete the line which starts with Depends:, save and exit. Now we’ll have to update the package with the new control file:

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tar -czvf control.tar.gz *
mv control.tar.gz ../
cd ../
ar r davmail_3.8.8-1608-1_all.deb control.tar.gz
mv davmail_3.8.8-1608-1_all.deb davmail_3.8.8-1608-01_all.deb

Now install the new package:

..code-block:: bash

dpkg -i davmail_3.8.8-1608-01_all.deb

To configure DavMail, follow their server setup. My davmail.properties is saved on /etc/davmail/davmail.properties

Now comes the wrapper part. Download the community debian package from here. For example:

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wget http://wrapper.tanukisoftware.com/download/3.5.7/wrapper-linux-x86-64-3.5.7.tar.gz

Unpack it

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tar zxvf wrapper-linux-x86-64-3.5.7.tar.gz

The method I followed is the Simple App Wrapper. So in baby steps…:

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cd wrapper-linux-x86-64-3.5.7/
mkdir /usr/share/davmail/bin
mkdir /usr/share/davmail/conf
cp bin/wrapper /usr/share/davmail/bin/davmail
cp src/bin/sh.script.in /usr/share/davmail/bin/davmail-laucher
cp lib/libwrapper.so /usr/share/davmail/lib
cp lib/wrapper.jar /usr/share/davmail/lib
mv src/conf/wrapper.conf.in /usr/share/davmail/conf/wrapper.conf
mkdir /var/run/davmail
chown mail:mail /var/run/davmail

Now, let’s edit some files:

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vi /usr/share/davmail/bin/davmail-laucher

Here’s what I changed:

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# Application
APP_NAME="davmail"
APP_LONG_NAME="DAVMail Exchange Gateway"

# Wrapper
WRAPPER_CMD="./davmail"
WRAPPER_CONF="../conf/wrapper.conf"

# Location of the pid file.
PIDDIR="/var/run/davmail"

# If specified, the Wrapper will be run as the specified user.
# IMPORTANT - Make sure that the user has the required privileges to write
#  the PID file and wrapper.log files.  Failure to be able to write the log
#  file will cause the Wrapper to exit without any way to write out an error
#  message.
# NOTE - This will set the user which is used to run the Wrapper as well as
#  the JVM and is not useful in situations where a privileged resource or
#  port needs to be allocated prior to the user being changed.
RUN_AS_USER=mail

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vi /usr/share/davmail/conf/wrapper.conf

Here’s what I changed:

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# Java Main class.  This class must implement the WrapperListener interface
#  or guarantee that the WrapperManager class is initialized.  Helper
#  classes are provided to do this for you.  See the Integration section
#  of the documentation for details.
wrapper.java.mainclass=org.tanukisoftware.wrapper.WrapperSimpleApp

# Java Classpath (include wrapper.jar)  Add class path elements as
#  needed starting from 1
wrapper.java.classpath.1=../lib/wrapper.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.2=/usr/share/davmail/davmail.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.3=../lib/activation-1.1.1.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.4=../lib/commons-logging-1.0.4.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.5=../lib/jcifs-1.3.14.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.6=../lib/log4j-1.2.15.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.7=../lib/stax2-api-3.0.3.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.8=../lib/commons-codec-1.3.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.9=../lib/htmlcleaner-2.1.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.10=../lib/jdom-1.0.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.11=../lib/mail-1.4.3.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.12=../lib/woodstox-core-asl-4.0.9.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.13=../lib/commons-collections-3.1.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.14=../lib/jackrabbit-webdav-1.4.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.15=../lib/junit-3.8.1.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.16=../lib/slf4j-api-1.3.1.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.17=../lib/commons-httpclient-3.1.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.18=../lib/jcharset-1.3.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.19=../lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.3.1.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.20=../lib/xercesImpl-2.8.1.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.21=/usr/share/java/swt.jar

# Maximum Java Heap Size (in MB)
wrapper.java.maxmemory=512

# Application parameters.  Add parameters as needed starting from 1
wrapper.app.parameter.1=davmail.DavGateway
wrapper.app.parameter.2=/etc/davmail/davmail.properties

# Log file to use for wrapper output logging.
wrapper.logfile=/var/log/davmail-wrapper.log

# Maximum size that the log file will be allowed to grow to before
#  the log is rolled. Size is specified in bytes.  The default value
#  of 0, disables log rolling.  May abbreviate with the 'k' (kb) or
#  'm' (mb) suffix.  For example: 10m = 10 megabytes.
wrapper.logfile.maxsize=10m

# Maximum number of rolled log files which will be allowed before old
#  files are deleted.  The default value of 0 implies no limit.
wrapper.logfile.maxfiles=3

Let’s test it:

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/usr/share/davmail/bin/davmail-launcher start
Starting DAVMail Exchange Gateway...
Waiting for DAVMail Exchange Gateway.......
running: PID:13569

It’s running!!!!

Now, the monit configuration file:

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check process davmail with pidfile /var/run/davmail/davmail.pid
    group mail
    start program = "/usr/share/davmail/bin/davmail-launcher start"
    stop  program = "/usr/share/davmail/bin/davmail-launcher stop"
    if failed host YOUR_SERVER_PUBLIC_FQDN port IMAP_PORT protocol imap then restart
    if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout

Make sure you replace YOUR_SERVER_PUBLIC_FQDN and IMAP_PORT with what’s you’ve setup on your davmail.properties.

For the sake of completeness, here’s my davmail.properties, obviously obscured where needed :)

And that’s it, hope you find this useful. If you find anything confusing, let me know…

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