configure mail server on linux

Configuring Linux Mail Servers
Introduction
Email is an important part of any Web site you create. In a home environment, a free web based email service may be sufficient, but if you are running a business, then a dedicated mail server will probably be required.
This chapter will show you how to use sendmail to create a mail server that will relay your mail to a remote user's mailbox or incoming mail to a local mail box. You'll also learn how to retrieve and send mail via your mail server using a with mail client such as Outlook Express or Evolution.

Configuring Sendmail
One of the tasks in setting up DNS for your domain (my-site.com) is to use the MX record in the configuration zone file to state the hostname of the server that will handle the mail for the domain. The most popular Unix mail transport agent is sendmail, but others, such as postfix and qmail, are also gaining popularity with Linux. The steps used to convert a Linux box into a sendmail mail server will be explained here.

How Sendmail Works
As stated before, sendmail can handle both incoming and outgoing mail for your domain. Take a closer look.
Incoming Mail
Usually each user in your home has a regular Linux account on your mail server. Mail sent to each of these users (username@my-site.com) eventually arrives at your mail server and sendmail then processes it and deposits it in the mailbox file of the user's Linux account.
Mail isn't actually sent directly to the user's PC. Users retrieve their mail from the mail server using client software, such as Microsoft's Outlook or Outlook Express, that supports either the POP or IMAP mail retrieval protocols.
Linux users logged into the mail server can read their mail directly using a text-based client, such as mail, or a GUI client, such as Evolution. Linux workstation users can use the same programs to access their mail remotely.

Outgoing Mail
The process is different when sending mail via the mail server. PC and Linux workstation users configure their e-mail software to make the mail server their outbound SMTP mail server.
If the mail is destined for a local user in the mysite.com domain, then sendmail places the message in that person's mailbox so that they can retrieve it using one of the methods above.
If the mail is being sent to another domain, sendmail first uses DNS to get the MX record for the other domain. It then attempts to relay the mail to the appropriate destination mail server using the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP). One of the main advantages of mail relaying is that when a PC user A sends mail to user B on the Internet, the PC of user A can delegate the SMTP processing to the mail server.
Note: If mail relaying is not configured properly, then your mail server could be commandeered to relay spam. Simple sendmail security will be covered later.

Sendmail Macros
When mail passes through a sendmail server the mail routing information in its header is analyzed, and sometimes modified, according to the desires of the systems administrator. Using a series of highly complicated regular expressions listed in the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file, sendmail inspects this header and then acts accordingly.
In recognition of the complexity of the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file, a much simpler file named /etc/sendmail.mc was created, and it contains more understandable instructions for systems administrators to use. These are then interpreted by a number of macro routines to create the sendmail.cf file. After editing sendmail.mc, you must always run the macros and restart sendmail for the changes to take effect.
Each sendmail.mc directive starts with a keyword, such as DOMAIN, FEATURE, or OSTYPE, followed by a subdirective and in some cases arguments. A typical example is.
As stated before, sendmail can handle both incoming and outgoing mail for your domain. Take a closer look.
FEATURE(`virtusertable',`hash -o /etc/mail/virtusertable.db')dnl
The keywords usually define a subdirectory of /usr/share/sendmail-cf in which the macro may be found and the subdirective is usually the name of the macro file itself. So in the example, the macro name is /usr/share/sendmail-cf/feature/virtusertable.m4, and the instruction `\ hash -o /etc/mail/virtusertable.db' is being passed to it.
Notice that sendmail is sensitive to the quotation marks used in the m4 macro directives. They open with a grave mark and end with a single quote.
FEATURE(`masquerade_envelope')dnl
Some keywords, such as define for the definition of certain sendmail variables and MASQUERADE_DOMAIN, have no corresponding directories with matching macro files. The macros in the /usr/share/sendmail-cf/m4 directory deal with these.
Once you finish editing the sendmail.mc file, you can then execute the make command while in the /etc/mail directory to regenerate the new sendmail.cf file.
[root@bigboy tmp]# cd /etc/mail
[root@bigboy mail]# make
If there have been no changes to the files in /etc/mail since the last time make was run, then you'll get an error like this:
[root@bigboy mail]# make
make: Nothing to be done for `all'.
[root@bigboy mail]#
The make command actually generates the sendmail.cf file using the m4 command. The m4 usage is simple, you just specify the name of the macro file as the argument, in this case sendmail.mc, and redirect the output, which would normally go to the screen, to the sendmail.cf file with the ">" redirector symbol.
[root@bigboy tmp]# m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
I'll discuss many of the features of the sendmail.mc file later in the chapter.
Installing Sendmail
Most RedHat and Fedora Linux software products are available in the RPM format. You will need to make sure that the sendmail, sendmail-cf, and m4 software RPMs are installed. (Chapter 6, "Installing RPM Software", will tell you how.) When searching for the RPMs, remember that the filename usually starts with the software package name by a version number, as in sendmail-8.12.10-1.1.1.i386.rpm.
Starting Sendmail
You can use the chkconfig command to get sendmail configured to start at boot:
[root@bigboy tmp]# chkconfig sendmail on
To start, stop, and restart sendmail after booting, use
[root@bigboy tmp]# service sendmail start
[root@bigboy tmp]# service sendmail stop
[root@bigboy tmp]# service sendmail restart
Remember to restart the sendmail process every time you make a change to the configuration files for the changes to take effect on the running process. You can also test whether the sendmail process is running with the pgrep command:
[root@bigboy tmp]# pgrep sendmail
You should get a response of plain old process ID numbers.

How To Restart Sendmail After Editing Your Configuration Files
In this chapter, you'll see that sendmail uses a variety of configuration files that require different treatments for their commands to take effect. This little script encapsulates all the required post configuration steps.
#!/bin/bash
cd /etc/mail
make
newaliases
/etc/init.d/sendmail restart
It first runs the make command, which creates a new sendmail.cf file from the sendmail.mc file and compiles supporting configuration files in the /etc/mail directory according to the instructions in the file /etc/mail/Makefile. It then generates new e-mail aliases with the newaliases command, (this will be covered later), and then restarts sendmail.
Use this command to make the script executable.
chmod 700 filename
You'll need to run the script each time you change any of the sendmail configuration files described in the sections to follow.
The line in the script that restarts sendmail is only needed if you have made changes to the /etc/mail/sendmail.mc file, but I included it so that you don't forget. This may not be a good idea in a production system.
Note: When sendmail starts, it reads the file sendmail.cf for its configuration. sendmail.mc is a more user friendly configuration file and really is much easier to fool around with without getting burned. The sendmail.cf file is located in different directories depending on the version of RedHat you use. The /etc/sendmail.cf file is used for versions up to 7.3, and /etc/mail/sendmail.cf is used for versions 8.0 and higher and Fedora Core.

The /etc/mail/sendmail.mc File
You can define most of sendmail's configuration parameters in the /etc/mail/sendmail.mc file, which is then used by the m4 macros to create the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file. Configuration of the sendmail.mc file is much simpler than configuration of sendmail.cf, but it is still often viewed as an intimidating task with its series of structured directive statements that get the job done. Fortunately, in most cases you won't have to edit this file very often.

How to Put Comments in sendmal.mc
In most Linux configuration files a # symbol is used at the beginning of a line convert it into a comment line or to deactivate any commands that may reside on that line.
The sendmail.mc file doesn't use this character for commenting, but instead uses the string "dnl". Here are some valid examples of comments used with the sendmail.mc configuration file:
• These statements are disabled by dnl commenting.
dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')
dnl # DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')
• This statement is incorrectly disabled:
# DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')
• This statement is active:
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')
Configuring DNS for sendmail
Remember that you will never receive mail unless you have configured DNS for your domain to make your new Linux box mail server the target of the DNS domain's MX record. See either Chapter 18, "Configuring DNS", or Chapter 19, "Dynamic DNS", for details on how to do this.
Configure Your Mail Server's Name In DNS
You first need to make sure that your mail server's name resolves in DNS correctly. For example, if your mail server's name is bigboy and it you intend for it to mostly handle mail for the domain my-site.com, then bigboy.my-site.com must correctly resolve to the IP address of one of the mail server's interfaces. You can test this using the host command:
[root@smallfry tmp]# host bigboy.my-site.com
bigboy.my-site.com has address 192.168.1.100
[root@smallfry tmp]#
You will need to fix your DNS server's entries if the resolution isn't correct.

Configure The /etc/resolv.conf File
The sendmail program expects DNS to be configured correctly on the DNS server. The MX record for your domain must point to the IP address of the mail server.
The program also expects the files used by the mail server's DNS client to be configured correctly. The first one is the /etc/resolv.conf file in which there must be a domain directive that matches one of the domains the mail server is expected to handle mail for.
Finally, sendmail expects a nameserver directive that points to the IP address of the DNS server the mail server should use to get its DNS information.
For example, if the mail server is handling mail for my-site.com and the IP address of the DNS server is 192.168.1.100, there must be directives that look like this:
domain my-site.com
nameserver 192.168.1.100
An incorrectly configured resolv.conf file can lead to errors when running the m4 command to process the information in your sendmail.mc file.
WARNING: local host name (smallfry) is not qualified; fix $j in config file
The /etc/hosts File
The /etc/hosts file also is used by DNS clients and also needs to be correctly configured. Here is a brief example of the first line you should expect to see in it:
127.0.0.1 bigboy.my-site.com localhost.localdomain localhost bigboy
The entry for 127.0.0.1 must always be followed by the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the server. In the case above it would be bigboy.my-site.com. Then you must have an entry for localhost and localhost.localdomain. Linux does not function properly if the 127.0.0.1 entry in /etc/hosts doesn't also include localhost and localhost.localdomain. Finally you can add any other aliases your host may have to the end of the line.
How To Configure Linux Sendmail Clients
All Linux mail clients in your home or company need to know which server is the mail server. This is configured in the sendmail.mc file by setting the SMART_HOST statement to include the mail server. In the example below, the mail server has been set to mail.my-site.com, the mail server for the my-site.com domain.
define(`SMART_HOST',`mail.my-site.com')
If you don't have a mail server on your network, you can either create one, or use the one offered by your ISP.
Once this is done, you need to process the sendmail.mc file and restart sendmail. To do this, run the restarting script we from earlier in the chapter.
If the sendmail server is a Linux server, then the /etc/hosts file will also have to be correctly configured too.

Converting From a Mail Client to a Mail Server
All Linux systems have a virtual loopback interface that lives only in memory with an IP address of 127.0.0.1. As mail must be sent to a target IP address even when there is no NIC in the box, sendmail therefore uses the loopback address to send mail between users on the same Linux server. To become a mail server, and not a mail client, sendmail needs to be configured to listen for messages on NIC interfaces as well.

1) Determine which NICs sendmail is running on. You can see the interfaces on which sendmail is listening with the netstat command. Because sendmail listens on TCP port 25, you use netstat and grep for 25 to see a default configuration listening only on IP address 127.0.0.1 (loopback):
[root@bigboy tmp]# netstat -an | grep :25 | grep tcp
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
[root@bigboy tmp]#
2) Edit sendmail.mc to make sendmail listen on all interfaces. If sendmail is listening on the loopback interface only, you should comment out the daemon_options line in the /etc/mail/sendmail.mc file with dnl statements. It is also good practice to take precautions against spam by not accepting mail from domains that don't exist by commenting out the accept_unresolvable_domains feature too. See the fourth and next to last lines in the example.
dnl
dnl This changes sendmail to only listen on the loopback
dnl device 127.0.0.1 and not on any other network
dnl devices. Comment this out if you want
dnl to accept email over the network.
dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')
dnl
...
...
...
dnl
dnl We strongly recommend to comment this one out if you want
dnl to protect yourself from spam. However, the laptop and
dnl users on computers that do
dnl not have 24x7 DNS do need this.
dnl FEATURE(`accept_unresolvable_domains')dnl
dnl FEATURE(`relay_based_on_MX')dnl
dnl
Note: You need to be careful with the accept_unresolvable_names feature. In the sample network, bigboy the mail server does not accept e-mail relayed from any of the other PCs on your network if they are not in DNS. Chapter 18, "Configuring DNS", shows how to create your own internal domain just for this purpose.
Note: If your server has multiple NICs and you want it to listen to one of them, then you can uncomment the localhost DAEMON_OPTIONS entry and add another one for the IP address of the NIC on which to wish to accept SMTP traffic.

3) Comment out the SMART_HOST Entry in sendmal.mc. The mail server doesn't need a SMART_HOST entry in its sendmail.mc file. Comment this out with a dnl at the beginning.
dnl define(`SMART_HOST',`mail.my-site.com')
4) Regenerate the sendmail.cf file, and restart sendmail. Again, you can do this with the restart script from the beginning of the chapter.
5) Make sure sendmail is listening on all interfaces (0.0.0.0).
[root@bigboy tmp]# netstat -an | grep :25 | grep tcp
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
[root@bigboy tmp]#
You have now completed the first phase of converting your Linux server into a sendmail server by enabling it to listen to SMTP traffic on its interfaces. The following sections will show you how to define what type of mail it should handle and the various ways this mail can be processed.