| Authors: | Giulio Bottazzi |
|---|---|
| Contact: | <giulio.bottazzi@libero.it> |
| Date: | 18 January 2011 |
Contents
Below I show how to setup a simple mail server (MTA) on your machine for local only delivery of local mail. In other words, following the instructions below you will be able to receive in your account on the local machine the mail sent from the machine itself. This could sound silly, but it is useful if you want to receive the mail generated as automatic notification by various programs, most notably cron.
This document was primarily conceived for a Gentoo-based system. It can however be adapted with minimal modifications to other distributions. Probably the only requirement is to change the gentoo package management utility, emerge, with the analogous utility found on your system.
Disclaimer for the novice user: The steps described below do not interfere with the "mail-retrieving" ability of your mail reading software (MUA), which is probably based on IMAP or POP protocols. On the other hand, if you want to configure a stand-alone mail server on your local machine, i.e. if you want to be able to send email directly to the Internet, without relying on the mail server of your Internet provider, or if you want to be able to receive mail on your machine, again without POP or IMAP connection to your Internet provider mail server, this document is NOT for you.
See the Linux Documentation Project Mail-User-HOWTO for a general introduction on mail under Linux.
The standard mail transport agent installed by Gentoo is ssmtp. So let's unmerge ssmtp and merge postfix instead:
emerge --unmerge ssmtp emerge postfix
NOTE: before emerging, enable mbox if you intend to use system mail spool (/var/spool/mail):
euse -i mbox
Once postfix is installed, you need to edit its main configuration file, /etc/postfix/main.cf, for few modifications. This file is rather long, and you must leave it essentially untouched. Below I show only the lines that should be modified together with their appropriate settings
| File: | /etc/postfix/main.cf |
|---|
myhostname = localhost mydomain = localdomain inet_interfaces = $myhostname, localhost mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, localhost mynetworks_style = host
The first two lines set the name and domain of the mail system to special names. The variable inet_interfaces lists the network interface addresses on which mail are received. The variable mydestination specifies the list of domains for which the machine considers itself the final destination. Modify all these lines to read exactly as above.
Also add the following setting to /etc/postfix/main.cf to disable the delivery of non-local mail
| File: | /etc/postfix/main.cf |
|---|
default_transport = error:outside mail is not deliverable
The variable default_transport specifies which transport is used to deliver non-local mail (by default smtp). With this setting, any mail from the outside will bounce back with an error instead of being stuck in the mail queue forever.
In some old postfix versions (notably version 2.2.5) the main.cf file seems also to require this extra line
| File: | /etc/postfix/main.cf |
|---|
unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 450
but this is no longer necessary with newer versions (2.2.10 and above).
As a final step, you have to decide where to store the received mail and set accordingly the home_mailbox variable in /etc/postfix/main.cf. Your choice depends on the format you use to store your mail. It could also be the case that home_mailbox is set twice in the default /etc/postfix/main.cf, once in the main body of the file (where it is commented out) and once on the last line. You should fix this so that the value you set does not get overridden by the second one.
Note that is generally acceptable to not specify a home_mailbox if you just want postfix to use the system mail spool. Some MUAs, such as mailx, expect to find new mail in the system mail spool and will not notice new mail if it is delivered to a home mailbox.
For the mbox format do
| File: | /etc/postfix/main.cf for mbox |
|---|
home_mailbox = Mailbox
to store all the received mail in the single file Mailbox in your home directory.
If you prefer a maildir format, do
| File: | /etc/postfix/main.cf for maildir |
|---|
home_mailbox = Maildir/
to store messages in the subdirectory Maildir of your home directory. Notice the trailing /. It tells postfix to deliver mail to a maildir local storage.
If you prefer MH format to store your mail (for instance, if your are a sylpheed user, like me) you don't need to add anything to main.cf. Instead, you need some external help, since postfix does not directly manage this format.
First comment out any line setting home_mailbox parameter in main.cf. Then emerge the powerful set of utilities in mail-client/nmh:
emerge nmh
and use the command (as regular user):
install-mh
to properly configure the package. This command creates the file .mh_profile in your home directory which defines the subdirectory where the received mails should be stored. Let's assume you have chosen Mail (which is the nmh default) as the directory for your mail. Check the position of the rcvstore program on your system, for instance using the locate utility
locate rcvstore
Assuming the returned path is /usr/bin/rcvstore, create the file .forward in your home directory containing the single line
| File: | ~/.forward for MH |
|---|
| /usr/bin/rcvstore
In this way postfix will pass an incoming mail automatically to rcvstore that, in turns, will store it in ~/Mail/inbox. If you want your message stored in a different folder, let's say in ~/Mail/myfolder, use
| File: | ~/.forward for MH different folder |
|---|
| "/usr/bin/rcvstore +myfolder"
When the configuration is complete you can check if everything is set properly using:
postfix upgrade-configuration postfix check
Also don't forget to run:
newaliases
even if you didn't modify /etc/mail/aliases, as Postfix will not operate properly without the alias database /etc/mail/aliases.db.
If everything is OK do not forget to start the service:
/etc/init.d/postfix start
and add it to the default runlevel:
rc-update add postfix default
As a final check, try to send an email to yourself. For instance, using the mailto program distributed in metamail package do:
mailto username
or:
mailto username@localhost.localdomain
where username is your user name.
If you don't want to become root in order to check the mail automatically delivered to you by various programs (for instance by cron) it would be a good idea to make your aliases in /etc/mail/aliases. Edit this file and set the root and operator according to
| File: | /etc/mail/aliases |
|---|
root: username operator: username
After, do not forget to update the alias database with newaliases. You can check if the alias works by sending an email to root:
mailto root
The message should appear in your personal inbox. The mailto command is part of the metamail package, install it using:
emerge metamail
This document is largely based on the discussion in http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=61606 . It was originally posted in the Gentoo Wiki site. Following the crash of the said site, and since I was the original author, I decided to move it on my personal web page. Even if I removed several later additions made by people on the Gentoo wiki version, it is quite possible that the present text contains quite a few improvements by different people. I'm not able to give proper credit to single contributors, nevertheless I want to express my gratitude for their corrections and suggestions.