Mail server, mail forwarding

[Corona688]

I want to set up a mail server that will download and serve emails from an SMTP account somewhere else. What software would be reccomended for this? Any good FAQs on this I've somehow missed?
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[Ijon Tichy]

I've got a simple set up with fetchmail and postfix. Fetchmail goes out and downloads mail from a few accounts and it's all spam filtered and delivered locally.

This guy's directions are for something a bit more complex, but you can probably pick and choose the pieces you want:
http://www.jennings.homelinux.net/mailserver_config.html
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[Corona688]

Auuuggh. This is why I gave up the last 5 times I tried setting up a mail daemon. I've got farther this time -- it's running -- but any mail I send to it vanishes into the ether. Not bouncing, just... gone. How can I debug this?
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[magic919]

If it's Postfix then take a look in your logs. You'll get an idea of what's happening. You can make them more verbose if you are still clueless about what's happening to the mail.

[Corona688]

It's Postfix, yes. There aren't any logs, so far. It's got all the signs of life of a depleted uranium lawn gnome, except it's a depleted uranium lawn gnome that's managed to send me my cron mails. That's something, anyway. ...actually, that's VERY suprising, considering I unmerged ssmtp and never told postfix to forward them to my old email.

I finally got my messages back: "Deferred: Connection timed out with <my.host>"

And yet, checking my netstat shows an unholy mess of things connected:

[Corona688]

It turns out I'd managed to break my system logger, too... no wonder. Postfix is being slightly more chatty now, and I've fixed a few config file complaints. Let's see how it works now...
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[magic919]

It's paramount that you get the syslog as you'll need the logging to see what Postfix is up to. I use syslog-ng and stick the mail logs in /var/log/maillog.

Common problem is Postfix choking on a duff config and then not accepting email. Get the logging working and then tail the logs and you'd see this.

Hope it goes well.

[Corona688]

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction! I've finally managed to put a few of the pieces together this time, and now have:

• A functioning MTA, postfix, which feeds emails into ~/.maildir/
  
• Functioning POP3 over SSH, which feeds these maildirs to remote clients
  
• fetchmail in my crontab, to check for and download emails from my old address

Hence I no longer need to run kmail all weekend to prevent my ISP's tiny mailbox from filling up.

With all this done though, I've finally realized I forgot something -- smtp services. What would you reccomend as a good SMTP server, which hopefully supports mysql authentication the same way postfix does?
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[magic919]

What do you want on the SMTP side that Postfix can't provide?

[Corona688]

OK...that is interesting. It will accept smtp from arbitrary clients, but will not accept it from localhost? I had to force fetchmail to use /usr/lib/deliverquota instead of trying to connect. How do I fix these?
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[magic919]

Postfix is great until people start trying to configure it It would accept connections from localhost out of the box. postconf -n will let you know what you've changed.