Docker setup for Liferay 7 with SMTP, document library and more as Part II

In my previous blog we talked about setting up docker with Liferay and MySQL!


In this blog we will integrate SMTP server inside docker and setup mount for document_library.
We will go through content of Dockerfile which we cloned from repo and made necessary changes.

Few terms we need to understand before jumping to the setup

Dockerfile : Docker can build images automatically by reading the instructions from a Dockerfile. A Dockerfile is a text document that contains all the commands a user could call on the command line to assemble an image. Using docker build users can create an automated build that executes several command-line instructions in succession.


Volume : A data volume is a specially-designated directory within one or more containers that bypasses the Union File System.

Mount : A mount point is a directory in a file system where additional information is logically connected  from a storage location outside the operating system’s root drive and partition.

Cool, Let's move forward and have a look on docker-compose.yml

version: '2'
services:
  portal:
    build: .
    ports:
     - "8080:8080"
     - "11311:11311"
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=lportal
      - MAIL_SERVER=mail-server
      - MAIL_SERVER_SMTP_PORT=25
      - MAIL_SERVER_USER_FROM=admin@mail.vipin.org
      - MAIL_SERVER_USER_FROM_PASSWORD=admin
      - MAIL_SERVER_AUTH=true
    volumes:
    - "./data/deploy:/usr/local/liferay-ce-portal-7.0-ga3/deploy"
    - "./data/document_library:/usr/local/liferay-ce-portal-7.0-ga3/data/document_library"
    depends_on:
     - mysql
     - mail-server
  mail-server:
    image: million12/citadel
    ports:
      - "25:25"
      - "110:110"
      - "143:143"
      - "465:465"
      - "587:587"
      - "993:993"
      - "995:995"
      - "9090:8080"
      - "10022:22"
    environment:
      - ROOT_PASS=root
      - PASSWORD=admin
      - DOMAIN=vipin.org
    hostname: mail.vipin.org
  mysql:
    image: mdelapenya/mysql-utf8
    ports:
     - "3306:3306"
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=lportal
      - character-set-server=utf8mb4
      - collation-server=utf8mb4_unicode_ci

This is the same file which we used earlier with addition of mail server setup and mounting document library.

SMTP

We are using million12/citadel repository for SMTP server. There are so may smtp server available in docker hub but this is a easy one with web ui and authentication support.

As you can see in yml file we have added one more dependency service mail-server.  We have exposed ports for smtp, ssl, web ui etc. hostname is your mail extension here.
So you create a user inside smtp server with web support which is available on port 9090, e.g. 192.168.99.100:9090

You can login as admin/admin for administrator account or create user from outside with Register New User link, e.g. vipin.bardia@mail.vipin.org.
Use the same user and create that account in Liferay portal and check on the same mail id if you get a welcome mail like this or not.

Amazing, now you have your own SMTP server with few lines of configuration :)

Document Library

Let's talk about Volume and Mount again. I've already shared there definition above so will go through the use of it in our case.

Let's say I want to move my server to somewhere else, what is required other than database?
It's my documents which is stored in data/document_library folder.

So what can I do about this?

- "./data/deploy:/usr/local/liferay-ce-portal-7.0-ga3/deploy"
- "./data/document_library:/usr/local/liferay-ce-portal-7.0-ga3/data/document_library"

As you can see here ./data/document_library  is my local folder where [.]  represents current directory and /usr/local/liferay-ce-portal-7.0-ga3/data/document_library is my document library folder which is separated by [:] this line creates a volume inside docker container and mount it our local folder.

Whenever we upload anything like this in Liferay

It will be synced to our local folder like this

In the same manner we mount deploy folder and as soon as we drop the file war/jar inside it, it is copied to volume deploy folder and starts deployment.

Dockerfile: These are instruction which is executed step by step to create a new image.

FROM mdelapenya/liferay-portal:7-ce-ga3-tomcat-hsql
MAINTAINER Manuel de la Peña <manuel.delapenya@liferay.com>

COPY ./configs/portal-ext.properties $LIFERAY_HOME/portal-ext.properties

ENTRYPOINT ["catalina.sh", "run"]

1. Fetch image from repository
2. Information about Maintainer
3. Copy portal-ext to docker image at specified path
4. $LIFERAY_HOME is environment variable
5. Entrypoint will execute catalina

You are just done, Try & Enjoy the function.............:)