Neither review (read-only agents, Opus and Fable, over 972a9f8..400aa76) has a Critical finding. Both found the same serious one, and more: - The notification about refused mail was built on what a rejected row says of itself. Its domain is the one in MAIL FROM, which the client typed and Postfix has not yet held against the login when the milter refuses: an application over its limit could have had the panel write a message per made-up domain, to another tenant's users among others. And the same status is written when an application is refused for its client address, which is no limit. Refusals are now counted by the domain the login is registered under, only for logins that exist and only while a limit is set on the login or its domain; one subject per sending domain. They are read through a partial index of their own (migration 0005): the query walked the whole send log every minute. - Account and user e-mails were checked with the DMARC report validator, which refuses Gmail and the like - the owner's own kind of address. A new validate.AccountEmail accepts them and refuses a local part beginning "-". - "Said" now means sent: what arises while nobody can be told, or while Postfix does not take the message, is told at a later check. Its ending with nobody left to tell is simply over. - Two DNS checks must be 45 minutes apart as well as two: the last check before a restart and the first after it were minutes apart. - The notifier's own mail waiting in the queue, and its bounce coming back to postmaster@ this server, are not the queue's subject. A listing cut at its size limit or with a line too long to read is no listing; postqueue -j gets 30 seconds. - The tables must name the selector the panel shows, not only have the line. - An a/mx lookup that did not answer inside the SPF check made the record "not authorising"; it is "cannot tell" now, for the pages too. - A ceiling of 60 messages an hour; a pass stops between domains when the process is asked to stop; sendmail gets a WaitDelay; days are rounded as a person counts; a failed read of the switch shows it on, not off. Recorded as accepted in security.md, with a roadmap candidate (from-header-binding): an application can have a message signed as the server's own name - or, as always, as another registered domain - by writing it into the From: header, which nothing holds against the login. Left as found: a recipient whose copy failed while another's went out is not tried again; a certificate that lives under 14 days is reported at each renewal. On the test server, for this tree: go vet clean, go test ./... 23 packages ok, make e2e ok (326 s). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
7.0 KiB
Plan: panel-notifications
Status: agreed 2026-10-12 - the design questions were closed with the owner and he took it into work ("Делаем")
Date: 2026-10-12
Version: 2.3.0 MINOR (one migration; opt-out by a switch).
Goal
The panel writes to its administrators when something needs them, instead of waiting to be opened.
Decisions (owner, 2026-10-12)
Events of the first version
Four, each of them something the panel can already tell and a person has to act on:
| Event | Who is told |
|---|---|
| A sending domain's DNS record stopped matching (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) | global users, and domain users the domain is assigned to |
| A level-2 rate limit refused mail | the same, for the domain of the limit |
| The TLS certificate is about to expire | global users |
| A message has been in the queue for more than three days | global users |
Three days, not one (owner: "one day is not that much"): Postfix keeps a message five, so two are left to act before it bounces. The threshold is a constant, not a setting.
Left for later: a process or milter socket down (a relay in that state often cannot send), an inbound upstream unreachable, DMARC failures appearing (noisy). Mail held in quarantine is not an event: quarantine is an idea outside the roadmap.
Sender and path
From postmaster@<SELFPOST_HOSTNAME>, submitted locally. Not from one of the
sending domains (owner): with several domains the choice is arbitrary, and a
message about the certificate has no business coming from a domain.
These messages have to arrive (owner: "we need the best deliverability for them"), so the server's own name gets what a sending domain has:
- a DKIM key for the hostname, generated by the panel, with which notifications are signed - no domain has to be chosen for it. An SPF record alone would pass DMARC, but not after the user's mailbox forwards the message on, and large receivers treat unsigned mail more strictly;
- an SPF record for the hostname,
v=spf1 a -all.
The records themselves are under Server › Settings (owner: "the DNS records go to Settings, Health has only the status"), in a box of their own drawn with the record component of a domain's DNS page: host, value to publish, copy buttons, state. Server › Health has a card of its own, Notification mail, with the state of each record and a link to Settings. A DMARC record for the hostname is not asked for: the name inherits its parent domain's policy, and with SPF and DKIM aligned it passes any. Without the records notifications are still sent, and the card warns.
Notifications are the panel's own mail: they are not rows of the Outbound log and count against no level-2 limit.
A relay that cannot send cannot say so; none of the four events is "the relay is down", and that is why.
Who chooses what
- One switch for the instance under Server › Settings.
- One checkbox per user under Account, "send me notifications" - on when the profile has an e-mail. No choice per event: four events, none of them noise. Per-event choice comes when there are more and some are.
- A user without an e-mail gets nothing.
When a message is sent
A background check once an hour for DNS, certificate and queue.
| Event | Sent | "Cleared" message |
|---|---|---|
| DNS mismatch | after two checks in a row found it (it has held for an hour). A resolver that did not answer is not a mismatch | after two good checks in a row |
| Certificate | 14 days before expiry, and again 3 days before if it is still the same certificate | none |
| Level-2 limit refused mail | at the first refusal of a sending domain's applications, then at most once a day for that domain (one subject per domain, as built: what the refused row says of its domain is the client's own word, so the registry is asked) | none |
| Queue older than three days | when such a message appears | one, when none is left |
Event state is kept in the database, so a restart announces nothing a second time.
To settle while building
- How the panel submits:
sendmailas the unprivileged panel user, and what that needs of the image. - Whether a notification carries a link to the panel - there is no setting for the panel's own address.
- Where the refusal of a level-2 limit is noticed: in the journal milter as
it refuses, or from the
rejectedrows of the send log on the hourly check. - Schema: the user's checkbox, the instance switch, the event state table.
Screens
Not drawn. The Notifications box was taken out of the account and
settings mockups on 2026-10-10 (owner: 2.0 ships no box for a feature that
is not built). Drawing them again - one checkbox on Account, one switch on
Server › Settings, the SPF check on Server › Health - is the first step, shown
to the owner before any code (panel-redesign.md
§ Enforcement).
Implementation checklist
- Mockups: Account checkbox, Settings switch and records, Health status card, help topic; accepted by the owner 2026-10-12 (
design:commit) - Migration and store: user flag, instance switch, event state
- Sending: local submission from
postmaster@<hostname>, message text (sendmailas the panel user; signed throughnon_smtpd_milterswith a key of the server's own name; no link in the text - the panel does not know its own address) - Background checker: DNS, certificate, queue; the rules of When a message is sent
- Level-2 refusal event (from the
rejectedrows of the send log, looked at every minute) - Panel: Account, Settings, Health card, help
- guide.md, architecture.md, security.md, schema-migrations.md
go vet,go test, e2e: a level-2 refusal reaches a mailbox as a signed notification (on the test server: vet ok, 23 packages ok, e2e ok; "once" and "clears" are held by the unit tests ofinternal/notify)- Technical review — Opus (2026-10-12; no Critical. Fixed: refusals counted by the registered domain and only under a limit, with an index of their own; account e-mails may be at public mail hosts; "said" means sent; DNS checks must be 45 minutes apart; the notifier's own mail is not a queue subject and a cut or unreadable listing is no listing; the tables must name the selector the panel shows; an unanswered
a/mxlookup is not an SPF mismatch; a pass stops between domains at shutdown; days are rounded as a person counts. Left as found: a recipient whose copy failed while another's went out is not retried; a certificate that lives under 14 days is reported at each renewal) - Security review — Fable (2026-10-12; no Critical. Fixed: the limit notification was built on the domain a client writes in
MAIL FROM- a mail cannon and a way to write to another tenant's users; a ceiling of 60 messages an hour; security.md corrected on who can submit locally and on what the account e-mail now is. Recorded as accepted, with a roadmap candidate: an application can have a message signed as the server by writing its name intoFrom:- the header is not held against the login, for sending domains either)