[ale] First time setting up mail server (postfix & dovecat)

Tue Dec 17 11:30:44 EST 2013

To expand on that.  In DNS you have to have an A record for “mail.example.com” that tells it what IP to use for that FQDN hostname.   You ALSO have to have an MX record that tells it your main mail server record is mail.exmaple.com.

For a BIND 9.x zone file for domain, example.com the records would look something like:

; Mail Servers
;
                   IN MX   10      mail.example.com       ; Main Mail Exchange record
; A records
mail            IN A    x.x.x.x                                          ; IP for main mail server

In the above the x.x.x.x should be whatever your IP is.    The semicolons and what follows them are comments and can be left out but if includes must have the semicolon.
The 10 after the MX is a priority.   If you have multiple mail servers you can give them different priorities with the lower numbers being the most preferred so people sending you use the preferred one if available.
Also notice that in the A record it has “mail” and NOT “mail.example.com”.   This is because the zone is example.com and will automatically append example.com to anything in the left column so long as it isn’t terminated with a dot.

Jeffrey C. Lightner
Sr. UNIX Administrator

DS Waters of America, Inc.
5660 New Northside Drive NW
Suite 250 (adjust as needed)
Atlanta, GA  30328

P: 678-486-3516
C: 678-772-0018
F: 678-460-3603
E: jlightner at water.com

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim Kinney
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 11:20 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] First time setting up mail server (postfix & dovecat)

In order to recieve email, the interwebs must be able to find your system. That is done by the host and domain name. You will need to be using real ones so postfix will understand what domains it's really supposed to accept mail for.
I have the domain jimkinney.us<http://jimkinney.us>. So I put that into my mailserver so it knows where it is. I have my DNS records set to send mail to my server (barkingcat.jimkinney.us<http://barkingcat.jimkinney.us>). So the mailserver knows it's name is barkingcat on the domain jimkinney.us<http://jimkinney.us>. Now when mail is _sent_ it shows in the headers to have been sent from me at jimkinney.us<mailto:me at jimkinney.us> and it originated from backingcat.jimkinney.us<http://backingcat.jimkinney.us>.
So you will need to put in your FQDN (mine is barkingcat.jimkinney.us<http://barkingcat.jimkinney.us>) for the hostname and the full domain name (mine is jimkinney.us<http://jimkinney.us>).

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Adrya Stembridge <adrya.stembridge at gmail.com<mailto:adrya.stembridge at gmail.com>> wrote:
I'm attempting to set up my trac installation to accept replies via email.   This is the first time configuring a machine to receive mail, and I have a noobish question.

In postfix/main.conf I am asked to provide "myhostname", which the examples show as 'mail.example.com<http://mail.example.com>'.   The next config item is "mydomain", which the examples show as 'example.com<http://example.com>'.

I don't expect much inbound mail traffic.   Is it necessary to have a subdomain for mail to be received?  If not, is there any gotchas with having identical values for "myhostname" and "mydomain"?

PS: I'm actually able to establish a connection to my server both locally and remote using "telnet example.com<http://example.com> 143" even though my "myhostname" value is 'mail.example.com<http://mail.example.com>'.   The connection fails with "telnet mail.example.com<http://mail.example.com> 143" since that subdomain is not configured in DNS.

Thanks.

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