Long story short, I want to host a few domains that absolutely need pop access to their emails. I would normally follow one of the simple guides in the Library, but I have concerns, and here's a brief run down why...

When I first got my Linode server, I quickly setup Squirrel Mail and that worked fine. I then removed it as it was really just for me to make sure I could do it. Then I tried setting up Citadel and quickly learned it was way more than I needed. I then installed postfix to make sure one of my domains with PHPBB could send out it's automated emails and such.

I then found out it was not working, and after some digging, it was due to some Citadel processes that were left behind. Once I got that cleaned up, all the pending emails from the phpbb setup went out, and thats been working fine for months.

Thats where I currently stand. But as mentioned, I have a domain I am about to start hosting, and am not sure what else I should install to allow it to work. Is there a guide out there for my situation? I ask this because I admittedly am not sure what postfix's role is in enabling pop3 access, or if it even is a factor...

Ugh, sorry about this, I just found the guide http://library.linode.com/email/postfix ... 0-maverick

I still have a question though. Anything to consider since I am already running Postfix?

Postfix is a mail transfer agent - it handles sending and receiving email via SMTP. Dovecot will do POP and IMAP access to the mail stored on your server. The only connection is that they can share authentication tasks (e.g. no sending mail out through Postfix until you have authenticated yourself via dovecot).

The guide you have found assumes that you use MySQL to store information needed by Postfix. This may not be the case in your current setup.

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/ Peter

That is correct. Right now only Postfix is installed, and the PHPBB forum is sending mails with no authentication. I have no problem going to the Postfix/Dovecot/MySQL method, and the guide seems pretty straight forward. My question is though, is if I run through all of that, will I then have to make the board authenticate to send it's emails? Again, not a problem, just trying to line things up.

No, you can tell Postfix to allow local users to send and require authentication for everyone else. See smtpd_client_restrictions => permit_mynetworks.

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/ Peter

Thanks, gonna try and attempt this all tomorrow night.

OK, this seems to be failing for me. Before we begin, let me define two domains for you:

www.legionofjeepers.com: This is a site I am hosting for a friend that is simply running a phpBB forum and has been working fine, sending emails via postfix I imagine etc. This appears to still be working after going through the tutorial.

www.teamslow.com: this is a domain I've owned for years. There is no content, and I really use it for random file hosting. This is the host/FQD I used for the tutorial (teamslow.com). I also created an MX record of mail.teamslow.com.

Now, after trying a few thing, I rebooted the entire Linode, attempted to use mailx to send a test email to travis@teamslow.com; and then went to the jeep site and had the forum send myself an email. I immediately grabbed /var/log/mail.log. Below is the log beginning from what I imagine was when the Linode reboot took place, up to the point of me trying the two emails

Nov 23 18:56:21 traviselijah dovecot: Dovecot v1.2.12 starting up (core dumps disabled)
Nov 23 18:56:21 traviselijah dovecot: auth-worker(default): mysql: Connected to 127.0.0.1 (mail)
Nov 23 18:58:19 traviselijah postfix/pickup[2209]: 912AA3251E: uid=0 from=<root>
Nov 23 18:58:19 traviselijah postfix/cleanup[2613]: 912AA3251E: message-id=<20101123235819.912AA3251E@teamslow.com>
Nov 23 18:58:19 traviselijah postfix/qmgr[2210]: 912AA3251E: from=<root@legionofjeepers.com>, size=343, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Nov 23 18:58:19 traviselijah postfix/trivial-rewrite[2615]: warning: do not list domain teamslow.com in BOTH mydestination and virtual_mailbox_domains
Nov 23 18:58:19 traviselijah postfix/local[2616]: 912AA3251E: to=<travis@teamslow.com>, relay=local, delay=0.45, delays=0.09/0.34/0/0.02, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (unknown user: "travis")
Nov 23 18:58:20 traviselijah postfix/cleanup[2613]: F269E3251F: message-id=<20101123235819.F269E3251F@teamslow.com>
Nov 23 18:58:20 traviselijah postfix/bounce[2617]: 912AA3251E: sender non-delivery notification: F269E3251F
Nov 23 18:58:20 traviselijah postfix/qmgr[2210]: F269E3251F: from=<>, size=2049, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Nov 23 18:58:20 traviselijah postfix/qmgr[2210]: 912AA3251E: removed
Nov 23 18:58:20 traviselijah postfix/trivial-rewrite[2615]: warning: do not list domain teamslow.com in BOTH mydestination and virtual_mailbox_domains
Nov 23 18:58:20 traviselijah postfix/trivial-rewrite[2615]: last message repeated 12 times
Nov 23 18:58:20 traviselijah postfix/local[2616]: warning: alias database loop for postmaster
Nov 23 18:58:20 traviselijah postfix/local[2616]: F269E3251F: to=<postmaster@teamslow.com>, orig_to=<root@legionofjeepers.com>, relay=local, delay=0.04, delays=0.02/0/0/0.02, dsn=5.4.6, status=bounced (alias database loop for postmaster)
Nov 23 18:58:20 traviselijah postfix/qmgr[2210]: F269E3251F: removed
Nov 23 18:59:02 traviselijah postfix/pickup[2209]: 88C773251E: uid=33 from=<www-data>
Nov 23 18:59:02 traviselijah postfix/cleanup[2613]: 88C773251E: message-id=<62636f0a1218d1c8c9a3753e8f18586e@legionofjeepers.com>
Nov 23 18:59:02 traviselijah postfix/qmgr[2210]: 88C773251E: from=<www-data@legionofjeepers.com>, size=1322, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Nov 23 18:59:02 traviselijah postfix/pickup[2209]: 913513251F: uid=33 from=<www-data>
Nov 23 18:59:02 traviselijah postfix/cleanup[2613]: 913513251F: message-id=<7fac219906e4de585e7ffb964e4a3472@legionofjeepers.com>
Nov 23 18:59:02 traviselijah postfix/qmgr[2210]: 913513251F: from=<www-data@legionofjeepers.com>, size=1322, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Nov 23 18:59:03 traviselijah postfix/smtp[2631]: 913513251F: to=<telijah@gmail.com>, relay=gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.45.27]:25, delay=0.47, delays=0.03/0.02/0.02/0.4, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 OK 1290556743 b1si3077294anb.128)
Nov 23 18:59:03 traviselijah postfix/qmgr[2210]: 913513251F: removed
Nov 23 18:59:03 traviselijah postfix/smtp[2630]: 88C773251E: to=<telijah@gmail.com>, relay=gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[74.125.45.27]:25, delay=0.72, delays=0.02/0.05/0.26/0.39, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 OK 1290556743 u33si15986275yba.90)
Nov 23 18:59:03 traviselijah postfix/qmgr[2210]: 88C773251E: removed

I tried using Outlook, using mail.teamslow.com as both ingoing/outgoing servers, and using the full email address as the user, and it simply says it cannot connect to the server. I do not know if that is because the "welcome" email has not been delivered, or something else through that whole walk thru didn't go through smoothly. The only things I did differently from the walk thru were the installations of postfix and MySQL because they already existed... were can I start to resolve this? The only other thing I did was add legionofjeepers.com to the postfix config file under 'mydestination... that line read:

mydestination = teamslow.com, legionofjeepers.com, localhost, localhost.localdomain

I have a suspicion the problem is there somewhere... Specifically line 5 and 7. Line 5 mentions root@legionofjeepers.com, not sure why. Line 7 says "unknown user 'travis', and the mail db has travis@teamslow.com listed in the User table. Let me know what else you need to see. To make things easier, the mail_admin_password and the first mail user password (travis@teamslow.com) I used the same one, but will eventually change that.

Thanks!

I just noticed to, I've set the hostname to "telijah", but every line in the log is traviselijah... is that an issue? I am not sure where traviselijah is coming from...

Anybody help? I tried Outloko again, and it is prompting me for username and password, but not accepting the login/pass I created...

The one problem I can think of is the line I continually see after trying to mailx travis@teamslow.com, the log has:

Nov 23 18:58:19 traviselijah postfix/local[2616]: 912AA3251E: to=<travis@teamslow.com>, relay=local, delay=0.45, delays=0.09/0.34/0/0.02, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (unknown user: "travis")

I checked the 'mail' MySQL database, and there is a user named travis@teamslow.com, and the domain teamslow.com does exist in the domains table as well. Anyone?

If you have virtual domains, you can't list them in mydestination.

Shorten your mydestination to look like:



and try again. (reloading postfix, of course.)

Hrm, things are looking good so far. The mail.log looks normal, and now the dovecot delivery log has something...

AND /home/vmail/teamslow.com/travis/Maildir finally exists. Gonna test Outlook right now...

Well, as mentioned everything worked up until sending the message using mailx, and I can see the apropriate logs have the email showing OK, but now I cannot get Outlook to access the box. It continually prompts me for the username and password...

However, I was able to read the email using Mutt, and I can see my test mail sent via mailx AND I can see the test email sent by Outlook... maybe I should reset the password for travis@teamslow.com in MySQL...

This seems pretty cumbersome. As mentioned, I am about to start hosting a few other sites, but letting the site owners fully manage them. Is this method I just went through ideal if lets say I'd like to let the site owners manage their email accounts?

In the meantime, I still cannot get Outlook to login to the first user I created (travis@teamslow.com), it just keeps prompting for username and password. Should I simply delete the user from the MySQL db and re-create it to make sure I didn't mess up the password on the account?

OK, so I deleted the travis@teamslow.com account from the MySQL table and re-added and still could not login. Then I noticed in Outlook settings it wasn't using SSL for incoming. Checked that box in and sure enough, it retrieved all my mail.

So long story short, I CAN get my email via pop. However, as mentioned in my previous post, this is not very user friendly if I am wanting to allow domain users administrate their own accounts. I imagine I could just set them up with the Gmail access of their domain's email, but if they do not want to use GMail, is there a better solution for email? As I see it right now, they would have to go through me for every email account they wished to have.

You could write a front-end to let your users add/remove/change users within their particular domains. There might already be something out there that will do that, too.

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