Boston University Linux

Help! I can't receive mail on my system! Print
Written by Matthew Miller   
Tuesday, 05 April 2005
As the saying goes: that's a feature, not a bug. For security reasons, we've configured postfix and sendmail (the programs responsible for transferring e-mail between servers) to be inaccessible from other computers. This is great for most workstations, but obviously isn't want you want for a mail server.

If you want to receive mail from the Internet on your BU Linux machine, you have to make some modifications to your configuration.

First, make sure incoming mail traffic is allowed through your firewall. You can do this with the GUI firewall configuration tool. Type sudo system-config-securitylevel to launch this program. Note that this is "write only" — it doesn't read in your previous configuration, so be sure to re-enable any other incoming services you wish to allow.

Then, configure your MTA to listen on the network interface.

For postfix (the only option in desktop-oriented BU Linux releases, like Velouria):

  1. Change to the directory /etc/postfix
  2. Edit the file main.cf, and find the line that reads:
    inet_interfaces = localhost
    Change this to be:
    inet_interfaces = all
  3. Save the file, and restart postfix with sudo service postfix restart
  4. Test by typing telnet hostname.bu.edu 25. Typing "quit" will exit out of the test.

For sendmail:

  1. Make sure the sendmail-cf package is installed.
  2. Change to the directory /etc/mail
  3. Edit the file sendmail.mc, and add dnl to the start of the line that reads:
    DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')
    This will comment out the option that restricts sendmail access to localhost only.
  4. Save the file, and type sudo make
  5. Add the line sendmail: ALL to the file /etc/hosts.allow
  6. Reload the configuration with sudo service sendmail reload
  7. Test by typing telnet hostname.bu.edu 25. Typing "quit" will exit out of the test.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 21 April 2005 )
 
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