Email Server. [SOLVED]

[justincataldo]

I'm pretty new to the whole Gentoo thing, and what I'd really like to know is the easiest way to set up email on my Gentoo server.

I've got a DSL connection, with a dynamic IP address. Using dyndns.org I have assigned a name to the IP. (me.dyndns.org for example).

I'd like to be able to use a mail client (probably thunderbird) to retrieve the email from my server using IMAP. From my server I want to be able to send email from the command line (eg: mail -s name@me.dyndns.org) or something.

Given this, I have been messing around with sendmail and mail and dovecot and different mtu's and a heap of different configurations, but I've not had much success and I'm rather confused about what I need to do really...

So given the information I've provided, what would be the easier way to set this up? I'm a little confused on exactly what I need to do. Like which things do I need? I gather than I need a mail transfer agent (mta), and a few other things, but I don't really understand how everything is intergrated.

I've heard about people using an IMAP setup using Dovecot and Courier. Most people swear that it is easier to configure than Sendmail. But they are all just and crazy each other to someone who is new to setting up email.

So what are some of the configurations people have running? Which mtu/mta/clients do you have running in conjuction and how did you set them up? I want to be able to send and receive mail externally (over the internet, not just internally).

[splooge]

I posted this somewhere earlier:

emerge postfix

/etc/postfix/main.cf -- edit these variables to suit:

myhostname
mydomainname
myorigin
mydestination
mynetworks

and you're done.

I also add this to help fight spam (you don't have to):

smtpd_delay_reject = no
smtpd_hard_error_limit = 2
smtpd_helo_required = yes

smtpd_helo_restrictions =
permit_mynetworks,
reject_invalid_hostname,
reject_unknown_hostname,
reject_non_fqdn_hostname

smtpd_client_restrictions =
reject_unknown_client

smtpd_sender_restrictions =
permit_mynetworks,
permit_sasl_authenticated,
reject_non_fqdn_sender,
reject_unknown_sender_domain,
permit

smtpd_recipient_restrictions =
reject_unauth_pipelining,
reject_non_fqdn_recipient,
reject_unknown_recipient_domain,
permit_mynetworks,
permit_sasl_authenticated,
reject_unauth_destination,
reject_rbl_client relays.ordb.org,
reject_rbl_client list.dsbl.org,
reject_rbl_client sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org,
permit


for imap:
emerge courier-imap

it's really that simple
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[nevynxxx]

Or go to www.gentoo.org then look in the doc's section. There are 3 ro 4 different tutorials depending on the exact config you want.
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[JeffBlair]

Take a look here. This sounds like what you want. It will download your mail from your ISP, and store it on your PC. It even has a howto for webmail.

[justincataldo]

Well I've done all the splooge's post described. Now what do I do from there? How can I test it?

[splooge]

you can test it out using telnet:

#emerge netkit-telnetd
#telnet localhost 25

Make sure you get the 220 response. If not, you probably need to run newaliases and restart postfix.

If it works, try sending an e-mail to yourname@yourhost.dyndns.org. It should end up in the /home/yourname/.maildir/new folder, at which point courier can pick it up and serve it to you via imap or pop3.
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[justincataldo]

Here's what I've done so far:

myhostname = yang.jc.gotdns.org
mydomain = jc.gotdns.org
myorigin = $myhostname
mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, localhost, $mydomain
mynetworks_style = subnet

Then I ran postfix and tried to telnet to it:

[splooge]

You need to run newaliases and restart postfix. You didn't receive a 220 respons from your e-mail server. This typically indicates postfix didn't find it's alias database.

It should look like this:

#telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to fw.pwned.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mail.pwned.com ESMTP Postfix

.maildir will get created automagically when postfix receives its first e-mail.
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[splooge]

[justincataldo]

Ok, well I'm not quite there yet, but I'm close...

Using mutt, I can send and recieve mail internally. I can recieve mail from places on the internet (gmail etc), but can't send mail out to the internet. If I look at the mail queue using Webmin I can see it sitting there, but not being sent. How do I fix this?

And once that is fixed, how do I configure Thunderbird?

[splooge]

Your ISP might be blocking port 25 outbound. See if you can connect to someone elses smtp server.

telnet mail.pwned.com 25

And see if you get a connection
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[justincataldo]

I tried to telnet to your server from windows, but it said "Could not open connection to the host, on port 25: Connection failed".

From my server:

[rex123]

A little bit of gratuitous smtp background:

If you want to send mail to someone, it has to end up at their mail server, which is defined in DNS with an mx record. The steps are these:
1) look up the mx record for the domain in dns (take the one with the lowest priority number first)
2) connect to the mail exchanger (mx), port 25
3) send the e-mail using the smtp protocol

What this looks like when you do it manually (sending to [anyone]@microsoft.com):

[splooge]

[justincataldo]

Same thing on Windows "Could not open connection to the host, on port 25: Connection failed").

From Linux:

[DaveArb]

Looking on Google, Telstra started port 25 blocking in April, 2004. You can of course hit their mailserver on port 25, otherwise any email at all would be very difficult. Smarthosting through their mailerver, or convincing them to unblock your port 25 (should be unlikely) are your options as I see them.

Dave

[rex123]

Bigpond is clearly blocking port 25 to arbitrary hosts. A quick Google for 'telstra bigpond "port 25" blocked' confirms this.

So set up postfix to use mail.bigpond.com as the smarthost (or relayhost), and you will be fine. Here's the info you need: http://bigpond.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bigpond.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_admin=1&p_faqid=5564&p_created=1081218123

[justincataldo]

relayhost = mail-hub.bigpond.net.au seems to do the trick.

I can now send and recieve email internally and externally. However, when I send mail to an external address it says it came from justin@yang.jc.gotdns.org but if anyone tries to reply it's not going to work. The reply address needs to be justin@jc.gotdns.org. I don't understand why this is happening. In my main.cf file I have myorigin = $mydomain. But if I go cat /etc/dnsdomainname it spits out jc.gotdns.org. So where the hell is it getting yang.jc.gotdns.org from?

How do I configure thunderbird? At the moment I have got:

Server Type: IMAP Mail Server
Server Name: yang.jc.gotdns.org
Port: 143
Username: justin


When I start it up it asks me for the password for justin@yang.jc.gotdns.org. But when I put it in it says Login to server yang.jc.gotdns.org failed. Is port 143 the correct port? Do I need to change some IMAP configuration somewhere?

[rex123]

[katsiki]

Dear justincataldo:

I would skip installing an MTA until you get more familiar with the other parts of your system, since it sounds like you have a third-party account that provides SMTP. Give a try to using ssmtp, which is included in the default 2005.0 stage 3 installation. It will enable your daemons and your human users to send mail through your third-party SMTP server. To setup for outgoing mail, just configure /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf for your third-party SMTP settings. Very simple, very secure, and you can postpone getting an MX record, DNS, etc.

It is helpful to emerge mutt into the mix. Traditionally daemon config files are designed to use a command line such as,

[rex123]

[justincataldo]

Awesome! Adding set from="Justin <justin@jc.mydomain.org>" to Muttrc works. So now Mutt is completely set up. To send and receive.

Thunderbird is not playing the game though. I've told it to connect to yang.jc.gotdns.org on port 443 (I know it works 'cause I can telnet to it) and I told it to send outgoing mail to mail-hub.bigpond.net.au on port 25 (which we all know works 'cause we can telnet to it too). Yet, Thunderbird says to me "log in to yang.jc.gotdns.org failed".

[rex123]

Port 443 is accepting connections, but the logon is failing. Bear in mind that mutt isn't fetching mail via IMAP, so the fact that mutt is working won't help with thunderbird's IMAP connection.
I would guess that your IMAP server configuration is wrong. Either that or you are entering the wrong password all the time. As I mentioned, the logs should help. If you want more info, you will probably need to say what IMAP server you are trying to run.

[splooge]

edit the myorigin line in /etc/postfix/main.cf to say jc.gotdns.org.
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[justincataldo]