or in a package:

http://www.roadstead.com/weblog/Tutorials/PostfixEnabler.html

---
Hermosa Beach, CA USA

[ Reply to This | # ]

After my posting above I looked at my main.cf and the PostfixEnabler does things differently (shown below). I do have the ability to send mail via localhost, so assume I have Postfix enabled at least for sending. The PostfixEnabler only claims to set up sending.

Here's what the Enabler adds to main.cf:

###Start PostfixEnabler###
alias_maps=hash:/etc/postfix/aliases
alias_database=hash:/etc/postfix/aliases
mydomain=myDomain.com
myorigin=myDomain.com
myhostname=postfix.myDomain.com
###End PostfixEnabler###

I don't see the Enabler made any changes to the master.cf file.

Does the procedure outlined in the original posting do more or does it just do it differently? Any comments on which is better or what the side affects are?

Thank you for the original posting. I prefer the text editing versions of making these changes such as used in the original posting. Many post complex grep Terminal commands that are hard to read.

PS: Waiting for edit postings in this group.

---
Hermosa Beach, CA USA

[ Reply to This | # ]

You need not to reboot. Type "sudo Postfix start" in the Terminal. "sudo Postfix stop" when you want to halt the daemon.

[ Reply to This | # ]

mmm, Don't need to reboot just type in terminal /System/Library/StartupItems/Postfix/Postfix start .

[ Reply to This | # ]

Good tip, I needed to perform the following actions in addition to the ones listed above to make it work. When I first tried launching Postfix I got a bunch of permission errors, as well as an error that the group 'postdrop' did not exist. I'm not sure if this is just because of my particular setup or what, but the following might be useful to others.

I created the group 'postdrop' using sharepoints (I find it easier than with netinfo)

I had the change the permissions on all folders in /private/var/spool/postifx to be owned by the user postfix:

% cd /private/var/spool/postfix
%sudo chown -R postfix  *

Then change the group of the 2 folders /private/var/spool/postfix/maildrop and /private/var/spool/postfix/public to 'postdrop'

% cd /private/var/spool/postfix
%sudo chgrp -R postfix  public
%sudo chgrp -R postfix  maildrop

Lastly postfix startup complained if /usr/sbin/postqueue and /usr/sbin/postdrop were not owned by group postdrop:

%sudo chgrp postdrop /usr/sbin/postqueue
%sudo chgrp postdrop /usr/sbin/postdrop

After that postfix starts and stops with no complaint and seems to send out mail perfectly.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Major confusion:

I've been tring to enable postfix and had gotten to a point were it would send mail but to where I have no idea. It wouldn't error out nor would it send it to the mail box requested. So I followed the steps above (original post) and when I hit send for a test mail i had a kernal panic. Any idea how to get this working? Also for a domain can I make something up or use localhost or what? I'm tring to send mail only I can receive it form third party ISP's fine.

[ Reply to This | # ]

OK I tried postfix enabler. No Luck. Mail seems to be sent out using localhost but where does it go? No kernal panics… nothing. I did use my Yahoo's mail account smtp server setting for my domain so … who knows. I just need a clue what's going wrong.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The postfix setup will depend on your ISP configuration. For example, I have SBC DSL, and no mail can pass through without authentication. So I must define the relayhost as the sbc server name to get postfix to work.

Provide a few more details about your ISP and look to /var/log/mail.log for hints as to the problem and we can help you out.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thanks for the reply.

I added the missing users and groups as discribed at xlr8yourmac.com this seemed to help but nothing conclusive yet so I looked at the mail log as suggested which did yield some clues. "server refused mail service (port 25)" is listed A LOT in the log file and it contains hundreds if not thousands of entires. I'm not sure if my companies firewall is blocking the mail or if I have something screwed up.

Thanks for your help

[ Reply to This | # ]

OK a little more info.

It seems that the outgoing mail is working. I sent mail to my work account from home then logged-in throught the vpn and I received the mail. So it is working. Next question is can my offices firewall block the e-mail, and if so is there a way around this? I know one of my co-workers was using sendmail to use his .mac account at work (sending). Any ideas.

Thanks for the help.

[ Reply to This | # ]

You can configure postfix to forward outgoing mail through a relay by using the relayhost directive in the main.cf file.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Major ISP's usually block the access through port 25... to avoid people bypassing their mail servers...


[ Reply to This | # ]

I also had to fix the permissions before it was able to work.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I'd been hitting my head against a wall for a whole day. I had postfix running fine for sending mail, but i had negelected to edit the master.cf so i couldn't receive anything. Thanks!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Strange. First time I posted this it was added to the wrong hint...

If you did the upgrade option of 10.3 (and not archive or clean install) then the postfix user wasn't added to Netinfo. You'll be seeing errors like:

postfix: fatal: file /etc/postfix/main.cf: parameter mail_owner: unknown user name value: postfix

follow the instructions at xlr8yourmac to run the create users script that the upgrade didn't run.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I performed an upgrade installation originally of 10.3 and discovered the "missing users" issue as well. Quite frustrating, I was able to follow some hints posted about installing Postfix (from O'Reily I believe) under Jaguar and in the process recreate the users in Netinfo to make this work... however it is a bit disheartening to see that Apple's upgrade procedure can have such a glaring hole... I imagine that one of the first "point" updates to 10.3 will fix the "missing users" issue.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Ugh, my CD didn't have the CreateSystemUsers script. I dug around for it a bit. nothing. I'm getting a friend of mine to email it to me today. Or, I'll have to add the postfix user/group manually. Where did you find info on it?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Reference
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25623

Solution

1. Shut down the computer by choosing Shut Down from the Apple menu.
2. Start up in single-user mode by pressing Command-S during startup.
3. At the command prompt, type: mount -uw /
4. Press Return.
5. Type: /Library/Receipts/Essentials.pkg/Contents/Resources/CreateSystemUsers
6. Press Return.
7. Type: reboot
8. Press Return.

If it still doesn't work...
I also had to make sure with netinfo manager that the (now created) user "postfix" get the uid 27 as I "repaired the authorization" and it still didn't work.
You can see in /var/spool/postfix that all subfolders are owned by "27" that should be postfix except the subfolder pid owned by root.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Hmmm, CrateSystemUsers simply is nowhere on my filesystem. Odd that the CD I have didn't have it. What I ended up doing was getting a copy of the script from a friend of mine and running that. Postfix works now. :)

[ Reply to This | # ]

At the end of the main.cf file I found

# THE FOLLOWING DEFAULTS ARE SET BY APPLE
#
# bind to localhost only
#
inet_interfaces = localhost

which was changing the inet_interfaces = all that I had set above. If you have the same, you need to comment out the second inet_interfaces line, otherwise people won't be able to send you mail.


[ Reply to This | # ]

Thank you SOOOO much for publishing both the original hint and the second reference to "commenting out the second instance of the inet_interface line in the main.cf file. I had been able to easily get Postfix running but I could not for the life of me discover why it was only listening on the localhost interface. I knew it had to be simple!!!

It is exactly for this reason that forums like this and sites like MacOSXHints.com are invaluable. Only if more people knew to check here first before pulling their hair out.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Hi,
I got the same problem : I can send mail via postfix but I can't receive.
I don't understand your hint 'comment out second inet_interfaces line'
At line 635 at end of main.cf, I got the same as you:
[code]# THE FOLLOWING DEFAULTS ARE SET BY APPLE
#
# bind to localhost only
#
inet_interfaces = localhost
[/code]
There is no second line after that command.
But lines 105 to 107 look like this:
[code]
#inet_interfaces = all
#inet_interfaces = $myhostname
#inet_interfaces = $myhostname, localhost
[/code]
Should I have to comment out the second line here ?
Thanks


[ Reply to This | # ]

If MAILSERVER is set to AUTOMATIC (which is the default), then postfix-watch runs at startup. Its job is to watch the mail queue and fire up postfix when needed, then kill after a period of inactivity (1 hour, I think). This seems to be the resource conservationist approach, and may help on lower end systems (thanks jkh ;)

[ Reply to This | # ]

I'm a newbie here and need some perspective. I'm trying to set-up a mail server on my locally controlled web servering computer. I've read lots of articles, but nothing which spells out the mail infrastructe clearly. A couple of questions.
1. After setting up Postfix what next?
a. Can I now send out e-mail & receive it?
b. Do I need to set-up Cyrus, UW IMAP, or is there an Apple Mail Server already running? How do I do this?
2. How do I create new e-mail accounts?
3. Can I get AOL mail relayed to my new accounts?

Thanks,
Greg

[ Reply to This | # ]

I have a nice TUTORIAL explaining how to set up POSTFIX as an SMTP, I'll do a copy paste here, because i cannot add attachments...
(It's from MaxBulk Software, bear with the advertising...)

------------------
un you own Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther) Mail server in 5 minutes!
Send your e-mails with MaxBulk Mailer twice as fast bypassing your local ISP SMTP server...

This document is based on stepwise.com article by Graham Orndorff
http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Workbench/eart.index.html - Copyright 2001 Graham Orndorff

Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther) is shipped with a built-in mail server that comes deactivated by default. This mail server, named "Postfix" is a high-performance UNIX SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server. Postfix can be setup in less than 5 minutes and can make your MaxBulk e-mails deliveries up as twice as fast. Furthermore you will no longer need to use your ISP server, no more authentication, no more mails per session limit... Postfix, as a full SMTP server, will deliver all your e-mails directly to the recipients mailboxes.

The good news: once your Mail server's running, you will be able to set any mail application to use it. This will boost all your day to day mail deliveries.

Note: At the time of writing, Mac OS 10.3 ships with 2.0.10 release of Postfix. This document assumes the reader is reasonably competent with unix, and has administrative rights on the system in question.


Table of Contents

1-. What is Postfix, and why should I use it?
2.- Enabling Postfix
3.- Troubleshooting
4.- Restarting Postfix
5.- How to set MaxBulk Mailer to use Postfix?
6.- Legal Disclaimer




1-. What is Postfix, and why should I use it?

Postfix is the built-in mail server on Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther). It is bundled with many Unix operating systems as well. By default, it is disabled for security purposes, but it can be enabled easily by making a small modifications. Enabling Postfix allows you to specify "localhost" as your outgoing mailserver. By enabling Postfix, you'll never have to change your mailserver settings again. Postfix is also quite fast.

To perform all the requested changes you will need to use the Terminal utility.


Terminal is located in the Applications/Utilities folder

2.- Enabling Postfix

To enable Postfix, open the Terminal and type

sudo pico /etc/hostconfig


Typing "sudo pico /etc/hostconfig"


Find the line that has "MAILSERVER=-NO-" or "MAILSERVER=-AUTOMATIC-" and change the "-NO-" or "-AUTOMATIC-" to "-YES-". Note: Control+V to go to next page and use the arrow keys to go up, down, right and left.


Changing "MAILSERVER=-NO-" to "MAILSERVER=-YES-"


Hit Control+'X', press 'Y' and return to save the changes to the file.

Next step is to create a 'postfix' group and a 'postdrop' account using following commands:
(Write one command at a time followed by a carriage return)

echo 'postfix:*:23456:postfix' | sudo niload group /
echo 'postdrop :*:23457:' | sudo niload group /
echo 'postfix:*:23456:23456::0:0:Mail:/tmp:/usr/bin/false' | sudo niload passwd /

Then we set Postfix directories owner with following commands:
(Write one command at a time followed by a carriage return)

sudo chown -R postfix /private/var/spool/postfix
sudo chown :postdrop /private/var/spool/postfix/public
sudo chown :postdrop /private/var/spool/postfix/maildrop
sudo chown :postdrop /usr/sbin/postqueue
sudo chown :postdrop /usr/sbin/postdrop

Next, you must adjust the Postfix configuration opening 'master.cf':

sudo pico /etc/postfix/master.cf


Typing "sudo pico /etc/postfix/master.cf"


Once on the file, go to next page (control+V) and uncoment the first smtp line:

#smtp inet n - n - - smtpd

this way:

smtp inet n - n - - smtpd

Note: Control+V to go to next page and use the arrow keys to go up, down, right and left.


Un-commenting line

Hit Control+'X', press 'Y' and return to save the changes to the file.

Next, you must adjust your domain and host name opening 'main.cf':

sudo pico /etc/postfix/main.cf

• Find the lines:

#myhostname = host.domain.tld
#myhostname = virtual.domain.tld

and add bellow:

myhostname = your.domain.tld (e.g. stan.maxprog.com)

• Find the line:

#myorigin = $mydomain

Uncomment it so it looks like this:

myorigin = $mydomain

Hit Control+'X', press 'Y' and return to save the changes to the file.


• You can now launch Postfix with:

sudo postfix start

• Restart PostFix with this command:

sudo postfix reload

• To force deliveries to start:

sudo postfix flush

When you restart, Postfix will be active. To use that mailserver, just set your email client's outgoing mailserver to "localhost" or "127.0.0.1".

You can verity the server is running by using telnet to connect to port 25 (SMTP): for example..

telnet localhost 25


Checking if Postfix is running with "telnet localhost 25" command

If your connection fails, you need to verify that you have a DNS hostname for your computer and check for error messages in the /var/log/mail.log file. The Postfix messages are quite verbose and a great deal of help with debuggin a faulty installation.

Try sending yourself a test message from a remote computer, Be sure to specify the destination as the hostname and username used on your Mac OS X machine.


3.- Troubleshooting

Postfix can cause the startup process to hang. By making a minor modification to the startup script, you can eliminate this hang. To do so, open the Terminal and type "sudo pico /System/Library/StartupItems/Postfix/postfix". Add an ampersand (&) after the line with the Postfix command.

4.- Restarting Postfix

You can restart Postfix writing the following (in the Terminal):

sudo postfix reload

5.- How to set MaxBulk Mailer to use Postfix?

It is as easy as setting the SMTP host to "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" (Set 'Account ID' to whatever you like)


In order to use Postfix just set the SMTP host to "localhost" or "127.0.0.1"

At this point, you are ready to send e-mails as fast as hell bypassing your local ISP SMTP server and delivering all your e-mails directly to each recipient mailbox.

[ Reply to This | # ]

In the version of main.cf that I have on my system apple have 'kindly' added a set of defaults at the bottom of the file. These over-write the 'inet_interfaces' and 'mynetworks_style' values and set them to prevent remote connections. It's worth checking thay if you set any variables that they're not reset within the file at a later point.

You can check the actual running config with sudo postconf -n, which is useful for debugging purposes. Also it's sometimes worthwhile doing a sudo postfix stop followed by a sudo postfix start rather than a sudo postfix reload. A reload doesn't always seem to fix everything.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The most important thing is to use valid hostnames in main.cf, in most cases, mailservers on the other side will reject your messages if it can't reach the hostname. Here is how it works:
You added

myhostname = notvalidhost.com

When you send a message myhostname is added to your username and it looks like this

username@notvalidhost.com

Receiving server checks notvalidhostname.com and returns a message that notvalidhostname.com is unroutable.

I think any valid hostname will work. I use my own, set up at dyndns.org and postfix works without a problem for sending emails via Internet. Using this method can affect local mail delivery though.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Having problems with the mailbox size on your local machine? By default its set to around 50Mb. When you exceed this mail wont be delivered, and you will see messages in mail.log like:

Apr 30 18:42:37 myMac postfix/local[2456]: 47E237DF92: to=, relay=local, delay=0, status=bounced (cannot access mailbox /var/mail/foo for user foo. error writing message: File too large)

The solution:

sudo postconf -e "mailbox_size_limit = NEW_SIZE"
sudo SystemStarter restart "SMTP"

replace NEW_SIZE above with the size you want. 204800000 gives you 200Mb.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I try it but:

Last login: Thu Jul 29 22:47:22 on console
Computer-di-SuperUgo:~ superugo$ sudo postconf -e "mailbox_size_limit = 204800000"
Password:
Computer-di-SuperUgo:~ superugo$ sudo SystemStarter restart "SMTP"
Welcome to Macintosh.
Reloading Postfix configuration
postfix/postfix-script: refreshing the Postfix mail system
Startup complete.
Hangup
Computer-di-SuperUgo:~ superugo$


But It don't goes, wy?

thanks a lot

---
Ugo Fonzar - Aquileia (UD) - Italy

[ Reply to This | # ]

sudo postconf -e "message_size_limit = 204800000"
Password:
sudo SystemStarter restart "SMTP"

here it is my old problem! :)

---
Ugo Fonzar - Aquileia (UD) - Italy

[ Reply to This | # ]

Open up /etc/postfix/main.cf, and edit these lines to reflect your setup. These are examples from my setup; yours might be different.

• LINE 67: myhostname = stibnite.oeyvind.org
• LINE 75: mydomain = oeyvind.org
• LINE 91: myorigin = $mydomain
• LINE 105: inet_interfaces = all
• LINE 152: mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain
• LINE 239: mynetworks_style = subnet
• LINE 253: mynetworks = 192.168.0.0/23, 127.0.0.0/8

Save your work, and exit the file.

If your Mac is properly configured (ie, you provided host name and domain when you installed Panther), you do not need to change any of these values to get postfix to work. In every case, what has been changed here is exactly the default postfix will use if you do not change them.

The only thing you do have to change in main.cf is the lines:

# THE FOLLOWING DEFAULTS ARE SET BY APPLE
#
# bind to localhost only
#
inet_interfaces = localhost

# turn off relaying for local subnet
#
mynetworks_style = host

Comment out both of these lines by inserting a # in column 1 to prevent them overriding the values defined earlier in the file.

Stop and start postfix and you are in business.

David


[ Reply to This | # ]

It's probably not a good idea in general to allow your Mac to relay mail from anyone on your subnet. If one of those machines gets hacked, then it could start sending spam or worse through your Mac.

To prevent this, leave this line enabled:

# THE FOLLOWING DEFAULTS ARE SET BY APPLE
#
...
# turn off relaying for local subnet
#
mynetworks_style = host

Postfix will accept messages originating on the same machine for any Internet address. However, it will not accept mail from anywhere else unless the destination is an address on postfix's machine.

David

[ Reply to This | # ]

Does anyone know how to do this in 10.4? Apparently Tiger has no MAILSERVER=-NO- line in /etc/hostconfig, yet it's turned off by default. Strategy to get us all to buy the server OS, maybe? :-(

[ Reply to This | # ]

Under Tiger, Postfix is started using the new launchd service and doesn't require an entry in /etc/hostconfig. Edit the postfix specific files as described in this hint, then make a backup copy of the file /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist and replace this file with the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTD
s/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>org.postfix.master</string>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>OnDemand</key>
        <false/>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/usr/libexec/postfix/master</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>master</string>
                <string>-e</string>
                <string>60</string>
        </array>
</dict>
</plist>

To restart postfix, cd to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons and execute the command:

sudo launchctl unload org.postfix.master.plist
sudo launchctl load org.postfix.master.plist

This works on my system, but I'm no expert in launchd, so there may be a better way of doing it.

[ Reply to This | # ]