Issues with email on docker installation

[TaylorJadin]

I've been playing around with a docker based installation of Manifold, going off the instructions here:
https://manifoldscholar.github.io/manifold-docusaurus/docs/administering/installation#docker-install

I'm running into issues configuring email, though. I've tried using sendmail and SMTP, but whenever I try to use the "Send Test Email" button I get a "500 Error: API Internal Server Error" and no email is sent. Looking at the output of docker-compose logs -f I'm noticing this error that seems related:

api_rails_1      | F, [2023-04-14T16:20:23.025304 #35] FATAL -- : [0b8a81ab-1723-4f57-8d92-ce9865d853f9]   
api_rails_1      | [0b8a81ab-1723-4f57-8d92-ce9865d853f9] Premailer::Rails::CSSHelper::FileNotFound (File with URL "mail_styles.css" could not be loaded by any strategy.):
api_rails_1      | [0b8a81ab-1723-4f57-8d92-ce9865d853f9]   
api_rails_1      | [0b8a81ab-1723-4f57-8d92-ce9865d853f9] app/models/concerns/recoverable.rb:18:in `send_reset_password_email'
api_rails_1      | [0b8a81ab-1723-4f57-8d92-ce9865d853f9] app/models/concerns/recoverable.rb:14:in `generate_reset_token'
api_rails_1      | [0b8a81ab-1723-4f57-8d92-ce9865d853f9] app/controllers/api/v1/passwords_controller.rb:13:in `create'
api_rails_1      | [0b8a81ab-1723-4f57-8d92-ce9865d853f9] lib/middleware/omniauth_stack.rb:10:in `call'

At first, I thought this might be related to my nginx proxy setup, but I've tried it without that, and I'm still seeing the same error, so maybe I'm missing something else here in my setup.

[TaylorJadin]

Its also just now occurring to me that this might have made more sense to put as an issue over at https://github.com/ManifoldScholar/manifold-docker-compose

So let me know if I should close this and file it over there!

[zdavis]

Thanks for reporting this. I'll try to take a look at this over the weekend and see if I can sort it out.

[stevegiessler]

I ran into this very issue earlier today and was able to resolve it by exec-ing into the main rails container:

docker exec -it manifold-api_rails-1 bash

And once in there:

cd /opt/manifold/api/public
touch mail_styles.css

Then exit out of the container and restart the containers (not sure if that step is actually necessary).

Turns out it just wanted that stylesheet to be present, even if empty. You can see it was looking for that in the logs. Took me a bit to figure out exactly where to put that file...

Also, for me, the "Sendmail" option in the GUI did not work, despite my MTA being configured properly on the host VM. So I tried the SMTP option and sending mail finally worked from the Manifold test mail in the GUI. I am still having another issue with images in the mail message not displaying but that is because I am using a custom Nginx reverse proxy and I just need to work out how to get the static files to load. Anyway, I hope that helps some folks.

[TaylorJadin]

@stevegiessler That did the trick for me, thanks!

In my experience this worked without needing to restart the containers:

docker exec manifold_api_rails_1 touch /opt/manifold/api/public/mail_styles.css