Chainguard Container for gitlab-mailroom-fips

GitLab Mailroom is a daemon that monitors IMAP and POP3 mailboxes for incoming emails and forwards them to GitLab. It enables email-based workflows such as creating issues via email, replying to issues, and Service Desk functionality.

To get more information about the image, please visit the GitLab repository.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitlab-mailroom-fips:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The gitlab-mailroom-fips image is a FIPS compliant variant of the GitLab Mailroom container, designed for organizations with federal compliance requirements. Key differences from the standard image:

• Runs as a non-root user by default
• Tagged with the gitlab-mailroom gem version
• Enforces FIPS-validated cryptographic modules for all cryptographic operations

Note that this image does not include bundler and gcc.

This FIPS variant is designed for environments requiring FIPS 140-2 compliance. For standard deployments without compliance requirements, use the non-FIPS gitlab-mailroom image.

Getting Started

The gitlab-mailroom-fips image operates identically to the standard image but with FIPS cryptographic enforcement enabled.

Basic Usage with Docker

To test the FIPS-enabled image:

docker run cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitlab-mailroom-fips:latest

The container will start with FIPS mode automatically enabled through pre-configured environment variables.

Using with GitLab Helm Chart

Configure the FIPS variant in your GitLab Helm chart values.yaml:

global:
  appConfig:
    incomingEmail:
      enabled: true
      address: "incoming@example.com"
      host: "imap.example.com"
      port: 993
      ssl: true
      user: "mailroom@example.com"
      password:
        secret: gitlab-mailroom-password
        key: password
      mailbox: "inbox"
      idleTimeout: 60
      inboxMethod: "imap"
      deliveryMethod: "sidekiq"

gitlab:
  mailroom:
    enabled: true
    image:
      repository: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gitlab-mailroom-fips
      tag: latest

Verifying FIPS Mode

To verify that FIPS mode is active in your deployment:

kubectl exec -n gitlab deployment/gitlab-mailroom -- env | grep FIPS

You should see output confirming FIPS environment variables are set:

FIPS_MODE=1
OPENSSL_FORCE_FIPS_MODE=1
GNUTLS_FORCE_FIPS_MODE=3
GOLANG_FIPS=1

Configuration

The gitlab-mailroom-fips container includes all standard configuration options plus FIPS-specific environment variables.

FIPS Environment Variables

The following environment variables are pre-configured to enable FIPS 140-2 compliance:

• FIPS_MODE=1: Enables FIPS mode globally
• OPENSSL_FORCE_FIPS_MODE=1: Forces OpenSSL to operate in FIPS mode
• GNUTLS_FORCE_FIPS_MODE=3: Enables GnuTLS FIPS mode in lax mode (allows FIPS-approved algorithms)
• GOLANG_FIPS=1: Enables FIPS mode for Go cryptographic operations

These variables are set automatically and do not need to be configured manually.

Standard Configuration

All standard mail_room configuration options apply. The service expects its configuration at /var/opt/gitlab/mail_room.yml.

Example FIPS-compliant configuration:

mailboxes:
  - email: "incoming@example.com"
    host: "imap.example.com"
    port: 993
    ssl: true
    start_tls: false
    name: "inbox"
    idle_timeout: 60
    delivery_method: sidekiq
    delivery_options:
      redis_url: "redis://redis:6379"
      namespace: "resque:gitlab"
      queue: "incoming_email"
      worker: "EmailReceiverWorker"

SSL/TLS Cipher Considerations

When using the FIPS variant, ensure your IMAP/POP3 servers support FIPS-approved cipher suites. The FIPS cryptographic module restricts available ciphers to those validated under FIPS.

Documentation and Resources

For more information about GitLab Mailroom and FIPS compliance:

• GitLab Incoming Email Documentation
• GitLab FIPS Compliance Documentation
• GitLab Mailroom Source Code

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.