Postfix

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Postfix is the de facto standard Mail Transfer Agent (MTA).

See also
See the Complete Virtual Mail Server article for a full guide on setting up a well featured mail server.

Pre-installation

Since only one MTA can be installed at the same time on a system. The package manager will report a block when another MTA is still installed. This block may be resolved by manually removing the previously installed mail server package.

For example, to remove mail-mta/ssmtp, which might have been installed as the default when a certain program requested a mail server as a dependency), use --depclean:

root #emerge --ask --depclean mail-mta/ssmtp

If --depclean does not uninstall the package, it may be a required dependency of another package. In that case, it may be required to remove the second package that is depending on the first package in order to uninstall the first package. It is technically possible to force the removal of a package that the package manager considers necessary, though this can be a risk to to the proper functioning of the system; see the emerge section on removing packages if needed.

Installation

USE flags

mail-mta/postfix has several USE flags that may be desired for certain bigger setups. As this article aims at installing and configuring a basic Postfix setup, none of them will be required initially.

USE flags for mail-mta/postfix A fast and secure drop-in replacement for sendmail

+berkdb Add support for sys-libs/db (Berkeley DB for MySQL)
+eai Add support for SMTPUTF8
cdb Add support for the CDB database engine from the author of qmail
dovecot-sasl Enable net-mail/dovecot protocol version 1 (server only) SASL implementation
ldap Add LDAP support (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)
ldap-bind Add support for binding to LDAP backend using dev-libs/cyrus-sasl
lmdb Add support for using dev-db/lmdb for lookup tables
mbox Add support for mbox (/var/spool/mail) style mail spools
memcached Add support for using net-misc/memcached for lookup tables
mongodb Add support for using dev-db/mongodb for lookup tables
mysql Add mySQL Database support
nis Support for NIS/YP services
pam Add support for PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) - DANGEROUS to arbitrarily flip
postgres Add support for the postgresql database
sasl Add support for the Simple Authentication and Security Layer
selinux !!internal use only!! Security Enhanced Linux support, this must be set by the selinux profile or breakage will occur
sqlite Add support for sqlite - embedded sql database
ssl Add support for SSL/TLS connections (Secure Socket Layer / Transport Layer Security)
Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2024-12-28 22:39 More information about USE flags

Emerge

Install postfix:

root #emerge --ask mail-mta/postfix

Configuration

Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)

Though not entirely related, for a MTA to function properly, it is imperative that its hostname is set up correctly. Under Gentoo, /etc/conf.d/hostname and /etc/conf.d/net are the files responsible for this. In this example, the mail server is named foo on the domain example.com:

FILE /etc/conf.d/netSetup domain name
dns_domain_lo="example.com"
FILE /etc/conf.d/hostnameSetup hostname
HOSTNAME="foo"
Note
Do not use mail.example.com just because it may be externally known as such. Use the actual name of the system.

Verifying that the FQDN is setup properly for the domain:

user $hostname --fqdn
foo.example.com

If for any reason the FQDN cannot be set properly, Postfix needs to be told what its FQDN is, otherwise leave it at its commented out default:

FILE /etc/postfix/main.cfInform Postfix of its FQDN
# INTERNET HOST AND DOMAIN NAMES
#
myhostname = foo.example.com
#
mydomain = example.com

To have mail appear as coming from example.com instead of mail.example.com then:

FILE /etc/postfix/main.cfspecify your own FQDN
# INTERNET HOST AND DOMAIN NAMES
#
myhostname = example.com
#
mydomain = example.com

Trust and relay

This is a really important thing to get right. By default, a Postfix installation is pretty tight, only allowing users on the same subnet as the mail server to relay email through Postfix. If this gets messed around with, it can potentially open the door to all users from anywhere. This is called an open relay and is begging for abuse by spam merchants, likely resulting in the domain being quickly blacklisted. This defeats the purpose of setting up a personal mail server, if nobody will talk or listen to it.

There are means and ways, like SMTP Authentication, that allow to secure access to a mail server even further. Depending on the trustworthiness of the users connected to the local network, it might be beneficial to restrict access even for machines within the own subnet. This also has the benefit of not letting potentially compromised machines in the local network abuse the mail system, but entails additional configuration.

To only allow the mail server itself to relay email without authentication, make a change to main.cf:

FILE /etc/postfix/main.cfTrust no-one
# TRUST AND RELAY CONTROL
mynetworks_style = host
Note
Internal servers of course don't have to to use this server to relay, they can still use ssmtp to send monitoring information if needed.

Address extensions

Address extensions allow encoding additional information besides the recipient in a valid email address. The recipient is separated from the additional information usually by a + character, but it is configurable. To enable support for address extensions, edit main.cf:

FILE /etc/postfix/main.cfSet a delimiter to enable address extensions
# ADDRESS EXTENSIONS (e.g., user+foo)
recipient_delimiter = +

The way this works is, when trying to deliver a message to testuser+spam@example.com, Postfix will try to deliver the message to testuser+spam first, if no such user is found, it will be delivered to testuser, the part of the email address before the delimiter. This feature can be quite useful for sites that require email address registration. Signing up with testuser+somesite@example.com allows to easily filter and trace where a message originated from. If for example some unsolicited mail was delivered to that address, it likely comes from somesite. Even better filtering of unsolicited email can be achieved by using Spamassassin or AMaViS.

Miscellaneous configuration

maildir

When Postfix completes merging and the mailbox USE flag is set, a home_mailbox directive is added at the bottom of the file. To make future updates easier, it's a good idea to move the home_mailbox = .maildir/ to its appropriate location in the file.

For testing purposes, the following two features can be temporarily enabled:

Soft bounce

Soft bounce decreases the chances of endless bounce loops caused by an invalid email setup. To enable soft bouncing, add this to main.cf:

FILE /etc/postfix/main.cfSoft Bounce
soft_bounce = yes

Verbose SMTP

Note
This often hides problems in a mountain of logs and should only be done as a last resort. The default logging provides enough information to point in the right direction.

Before testing the basic mail server setup, the verbose flag of the smtp server can be enabled by adding a -v to the smtpd daemon invocation in master.cf:

FILE /etc/postfix/master.cfVerbose smtpd
# ==========================================================================
# service type  private unpriv  chroot  wakeup  maxproc command + args
#               (yes)   (yes)   (yes)   (never) (100)
# ==========================================================================
smtp      inet  n       -       n       -       -       smtpd -v

That rounds up basic configuration. Postfix offers a vast amount of other features, including virtual domains and users, that exceed the current scope of this article.

Storage for address rewriting / routing tables

Optionally, as per the USE flags, there are quite a number of possible databases/mechanisms by which to store address-related rewrite rules and routing information. To use a database (sqlite, mariadb, etc.) then now is the time to read the documentation. If nothing is changed, postfix will still work fine, and this may be changed later.

Starting Postfix

Before starting Postfix for the first time, the local alias database has to be compiled. If this is not done, Postfix may appear to have started normally, but won't work and the log (usually found in /var/log/mail.log) will be peppered with errors: 

Mar 16 11:40:32 foo postfix/smtpd[18923]: fatal: open database /etc/mail/aliases.db: No such file or directory

The alias database contains default local accounts required by various RFCs and common internet practice, as well as some pseudo accounts. Simply run the newaliases command to generate the database:

root #newaliases

Now it is time to start postfix for the very first time:

root #/etc/init.d/postfix start

It can be very useful to monitor the mail log file using tail -f. By default, postfix logs to the syslog but this can be filtered, which will be covered later in this chapter. A successful start looks like this: 

Nov 23 15:26:42 foo postfix/postfix-script[13433]: starting the Postfix mail system
Nov 23 15:26:42 foo postfix/master[13434]: daemon started -- version 2.8.4, configuration /etc/postfix

Testing Postfix

Postfix should be running properly now and accept connections on port 25, the default SMTP port, and send email anywhere in the world.

If available, the sendmail compatible program (installed by postfix) can be used to send a test e-mail:

user $echo "test" ¦ sendmail <(username)@(validdomain).(tld)>

If not available, or test from a remote machine (which is allowed to relay e-mail) is used, the following can be used also.

As SMTP is a simple plain-text protocol, email may be sent manually using a telnet client. Replace the example address <(username)@(validdomain).(tld)> with a real email address to see it work. This is an example SMTP conversation with the parts the client (in this case that is the user) sends are highlighted in yellow:

user $telnet foo.example.com 25
Trying foo.example.com...

Connected to foo.example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 foo.example.com ESMTP Postfix
HELO localhost
250 foo.example.com
MAIL FROM: <me@somewhere.com>
250 2.1.0 Ok
RCPT TO: <(username)@(validdomain).(tld)>
250 2.1.5 Ok
DATA
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Subject: Test email

Testmail to ensure Postfix is working.
.
 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 6705C20E32
QUIT
221 2.0.0 Bye

Connection closed by foreign host.

Looking at the mail log it can be verified that the message got properly relayed: 

Nov 23 16:13:02 foo postfix/smtpd[28494]: connect from foo.example.com[127.0.0.1]
Nov 23 16:13:49 foo postfix/smtpd[28494]: 6705C20E32: client=foo.example.com[127.0.0.1]
Nov 23 16:13:51 foo postfix/cleanup[28508]: 6705C20E32: message-id=<20111123151349.6705C20E32@foo.example.com>
Nov 23 16:13:51 foo postfix/qmgr[28490]: 6705C20E32: from=<me@somewhere.com>, size=314, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Nov 23 16:13:52 foo postfix/smtp[28510]: 6705C20E32: to=<(username)@(validdomain).(tld)>, relay=mail.(validdomain)(.tld)[5.6.7.8]:25, ⏎
delay=19, delays=18/0.02/0.37/0.32, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 469A684F8)
Nov 23 16:13:52 foo postfix/qmgr[28490]: 6705C20E32: removed
Nov 23 16:13:54 foo postfix/smtpd[28494]: disconnect from foo.example.com[127.0.0.1]

Performing the same test from a different host should fail, as it is untrusted:

user $telnet foo.example.com 25
Trying foo.example.com...

Connected to foo.example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 foo.example.com ESMTP Postfix
HELO localhost
250 foo.example.com
MAIL FROM: <me@somewhere.com>
250 2.1.0 Ok
RCPT TO: <(username)@(validdomain).(tld)>
454 4.7.1 <(username)@(validdomain).(tld)>: Relay access denied
QUIT
221 2.0.0 Bye

Connection closed by foreign host.

Logging

By default, syslog does not filter mail logs to a separate file, which can be very useful on a busy mail server. For syslog-ng, create file to define the filtering:

FILE /etc/syslog-ng/mail.confMail log filter
destination mail {
    file("/var/log/mail.log");
};

destination mailinfo {
    file("/var/log/mail.info");
};

destination mailwarn {
    file("/var/log/mail.warn");
};

destination mailerr {
    file("/var/log/mail.err");
};

filter f_mail {
    facility(mail);
};

filter f_info {
    level(info);
};

filter f_warn {
    level(warn);
};

filter f_err {
    level(err);
};

log {   
    source(src);
    filter(f_mail);
    destination(mail);
};

log {   
    source(src);
    filter(f_mail);
    filter(f_info);
    destination(mailinfo);
    flags(final);
};

log {   
    source(src);
    filter(f_mail);
    filter(f_warn);
    destination(mailwarn);
    flags(final);
};

log {   
    source(src);
    filter(f_mail);
    filter(f_err);
    destination(mailerr);
    flags(final);
};

And then include it in the main syslog-ng configuration file:

FILE /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.confSyslog-ng config
@include "mail.conf"

Remember to reload syslog-ng to activate the filter.

Safety net

While testing, it may be desirable to not have mail rejected just yet. By default, postfix rejects mails to unknown mailboxes. As a safety feature, it is possible to ask the sender to try again later using error code 450, from the default 550, reject:

FILE /etc/postfix/main.cfPostfix main
unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 450

Related Articles

There is the full guide for setting up a postfix server with ClamAV, Amavisd-new, Vipul's Razor, DCC, and SpamAssassin, though that guide is apparently somewhat dated and misses now common (arguably critical) mail server configuration responsibilities like DKIM and DMARC.

Alternatively, selectively add features from the articles below. The non-optional ones are highly recommended, and features are listed in roughly suggested order of implementation:

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