gsconfig.ini Overview

The gs.config package, along with the file etc/gsconfig.ini or parts/instance/etc/gsconfig.ini, provide the mechanism for configuring the GroupServer parts of GroupServer (as opposed to Zope parts.)

Significant documentation on the syntax of gsconfig.ini can be found locally in the egg documentation of gs.config or online.

There are four components that can be configured: database; smtp; cache; and webservice (documentation refers to ‘tokenauth’, this seems to have been replaced by ‘webservice’). Each component can have one or more specific configuration sections, loosely based on the instance or environment for which they are intended. I.e., there can be database-live; smtp-test; smtp-live; cache-dev; etc...

[config-<my_instance>] sections list which component configurations will be used for the instance represented by <my_instance>.

More specific documentation on configuration is available for some components:

• database - Configuration is primarily via a dsn string
• smtp - See the Configuration section of gs.email/EGG-INFO/PKG-INFO
• cache - I haven't yet found a reference for cache configuration, but for development I haven't needed to worry about it
• webservice - See the Configuration File section of gs.group.messages.add.smtp2gs/EGG-INFO/PKG-INFO

Configuring Email for Development

For development, it is useful to configure Group Server to use a local folder for its mailqueue and to not pass emails off to Postfix. By doing so, a developer can quickly see the complete email that the platform has generated, and doesn't have to worry about spamming actual users while developing.

To do this:

1. Create the directory "mailqueue" in the root of your GroupServer installation
2. In the mailqueue directory, create the following directories: "new", "cur", and "old"
3. In gsconfig.ini, creating the following smtp section and include it in your active instance:

   [smtp-dev]
   queuepath=mailqueue
   processorthread=False. 

Now emails that Group Server generates and attempts to pass on to Postfix will end up in mailqueue/new/.

Not that the mailqueue folder used here can be different than the maildir set is Postfix's configuration file. That’s OK, as the goal here is not to actually send the email, but to place it in a convenient location.