To install postfix run the following command:

sudo apt-get install postfix

Simply press return when the installation process asks questions, the configuration will be done in greater detail in the next stage.

To configure postfix, run the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure postfix

The user interface will be displayed. On each screen, select the following values:

	Replace mail.example.com with your mail server hostname, 192.168.0/24 with the actual network and class range of your mail server, and steve with the appropriate username.

Now is a good time to decide which mailbox format you want to use. By default Postifx will use mbox for the mailbox format. Rather than editing the configuration file directly, you can use the postconf command to configure all postfix parameters. The configuration parameters will be stored in /etc/postfix/main.cf file. Later if you wish to re-configure a particular parameter, you can either run the command or change it manually in the file.

To configure the mailbox format for Maildir:

sudo postconf -e 'home_mailbox = Maildir/'

	This will place new mail in /home/username/Maildir so you will need to configure your Mail Delivery Agent (MDA) to use the same path.

SMTP-AUTH allows a client to identify itself through an authentication mechanism (SASL). Transport Layer Security (TLS) should be used to encrypt the authentication process. Once authenticated the SMTP server will allow the client to relay mail.

	After running all the commands, Postfix is configured for SMTP-AUTH and a self-signed certificate has been created for TLS encryption.

Now, the file /etc/postfix/main.cf should look like this.

The postfix initial configuration is complete. Run the following command to restart the postfix daemon:

sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

Postfix supports SMTP-AUTH as defined in RFC2554. It is based on SASL. However it is still necessary to set up SASL authentication before you can use SMTP-AUTH.

Postfix supports two SASL implementations Cyrus SASL and Dovecot SASL. To enable Dovecot SASL the dovecot-common package will need to be installed. From a terminal prompt enter the following:

sudo apt-get install dovecot-common

Next you will need to edit /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. In the auth default section uncomment the socket listen option and change the following:

  socket listen {
    #master {
      # Master socket provides access to userdb information. It's typically
      # used to give Dovecot's local delivery agent access to userdb so it
      # can find mailbox locations.
      #path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master
      #mode = 0600
      # Default user/group is the one who started dovecot-auth (root)
      #user = 
      #group = 
    #}
    client {
      # The client socket is generally safe to export to everyone. Typical use
      # is to export it to your SMTP server so it can do SMTP AUTH lookups
      # using it.
      path = /var/spool/postfix/private/auth-client
      mode = 0660
      user = postfix
      group = postfix
    }
  }

Once you have Dovecot configured restart it with:

sudo /etc/init.d/dovecot restart

SMTP-AUTH configuration is complete. Now it is time to test the setup.

To see if SMTP-AUTH and TLS work properly, run the following command:

telnet mail.example.com 25

After you have established the connection to the postfix mail server, type:

ehlo mail.example.com

If you see the following lines among others, then everything is working perfectly. Type quit to exit.

250-STARTTLS
250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
250-AUTH=LOGIN PLAIN
250 8BITMIME

This section introduces some common ways to determine the cause if problems arise.

smtp      inet  n       -       -       -       -       smtpd

smtp      inet  n       -       n       -       -       smtpd

sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

Log Files

Postfix sends all log messages to /var/log/mail.log. However error and warning messages can sometimes get lost in the normal log output so they are also logged to /var/log/mail.err and /var/log/mail.warn respectively.

To see messages entered into the logs in real time you can use the tail -f command:

tail -f /var/log/mail.err

The amount of detail that is recorded in the logs can be increased. Below are some configuration options for increasing the log level for some of the areas covered above.

• To increase TLS activity logging set the smtpd_tls_loglevel option to a value from 1 to 4.

  sudo postconf -e 'smtpd_tls_loglevel = 4'
  

• If you are having trouble sending or receiving mail from a specific domain you can add the domain to the debug_peer_list parameter.

  sudo postconf -e 'debug_peer_list = problem.domain'
  

• You can increase the verbosity of any Postfix daemon process by editing the /etc/postfix/master.cf and adding a -v after the entry. For example edit the smtp entry:

  smtp      unix  -       -       -       -       -       smtp -v
  

	It is important to note that after making one of the logging changes above the Postfix process will need to be reloaded in order to recognize the new configuration: sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload

• To increase the amount of information logged when troubleshooting SASL issues you can set the following options in /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

  auth_debug=yes
  auth_debug_passwords=yes
  

	Just like Postfix if you change a Dovecot configuration the process will need to be reloaded: sudo /etc/init.d/dovecot reload.

	Some of the options above can drastically increase the amount of information sent to the log files. Remember to return the log level back to normal after you have corrected the problem. Then reload the appropriate daemon for the new configuration to take affect.