Bubba's E-mailserver

RonaldJ · Post by **RonaldJ** » 07 Feb 2008, 14:51

I have Bubba a few days now, and I bought it merely for the E-mailserver.
But I must say I'm a bit disappointed with the very thin manual and the few options in the E-mailserver.
At this time I run a pc with the Kerio Mailserver (Windows). I have 5 users and about 70 aliasses for the different users. I also have groups who receive mail together on 1 address.
I understand that it is only possible to receive mail at the same name as the user, say "john" can receive mail for "john@mydomain.com". But I want John to also receive mail for johnny@mydomain.com, johnnydoe@mydomain.com, mrjohn@mydomain.com etc.
Can that be done?
And if there is mail for johnandlucy@mydomain.com, can it be send to john and to lucy?
What happens if someone sends mail to someone@mydomain.com? Is it thrown away, or send to the admin????

Please give me more info on how to handle these items. Thank you!

Post by **tor** » 07 Feb 2008, 17:03

Hi RonaldJ,

Sorry to hear that the email configuration of Bubba was not what you had expected.

As you say yourself it is the posibility to add aliases that you miss. This is of course supported by the underlaying email server on Bubba, Postfix. But as you have found out we have not yet implemented any web-ui for this.

If you want to you can however fix this manually. Log in to Bubba and become root. Edit the file /etc/aliases to fx contain.

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johnny: john
johnnydoe: john
mrjohn: john
johnandlucy: john, lucy

When done run the command

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newaliases

to recreate the aliases database.

More information is available in the aliases man page

The catch all is a little bit more tricky. Then normal procedure when a mail has no recipient is to return it with an error message.

To be able to handle that we need to configure virtual mapping. Which is a bit more advanced than aliases. Thus this is a superset of aliases and virtual can do everything aliases can and a lot more. But is a bit harder to setup. (And this part i have not verified)

To start of we need to tell postfix where to find the virtual map, the text file with our mappings. As root run

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postconf -e virtual_maps=hash:/etc/postfix/virtual

Then to do a catch all for a domain. Create and edit the file /etc/postfix/virtual to contain fx

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@mydomain.com johnny

And to add the aliases from above replacing the same functionality add

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johnny john
johnnydoe john
mrjohn john
johnandlucy john lucy

When done editing run

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postmap /etc/postfix/virtual

to translate to the corresponding db-file.

Further information on the virtual mapping is available in the virtual man page

/Tor

RonaldJ · Post by **RonaldJ** » 07 Feb 2008, 17:17

Thank you Thor, that looks pretty straight forward.
I don't know that much of Linux, so I hope I won't break anything...
I will start with the aliases. If that works I'll move on.

RonaldJ · Post by **RonaldJ** » 07 Feb 2008, 18:23

Hi Thor,

I was a little rusty on the VI, but managed to fill in the code you mentioned.
The domain I filled in with bubba is - say - mydomain.net
In the aliases file I filled in:

something ronald

then ran newaliases

When I send an e-mail from outside to the address something@mydomain.net, it was sent back with the following errormessage:

Final-Recipient: rfc822; ronald@bubba.excito.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.2
Remote-MTA: dns; bubba.excito.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 Host unknown
Last-Attempt-Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2008 00:05:18 +0100 (MET)

I think it has something to do with the aliases database, because sending an e-mail to ronald@mydomain.net works ok.
Bubba has filled in the first part ok (ronald in stead of something).
Do I have to put the domain name also in the aliases file?
say:

something ronald@mydomain.net

I'm sure you can help me with this. I've got everything else on the E-mailserver working ok

I Installed IMAP in Thunderbird and I'm ready to go when this is solved!

Post by **tor** » 08 Feb 2008, 08:42

Sorry for that. My fault for not actually testing it on a Bubba

Either do a

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postconf -e myorigin='$mydomain'

and a

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postfix reload

or edit the file /etc/mailname to match your domain name, fx mydomain.net and reload config

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postfix reload

(Note however that this will only work when you receive mail for a single domain. If multiple domains is involved a virtual setup is needed)

/Tor

RonaldJ · Post by **RonaldJ** » 08 Feb 2008, 08:55

For now I only have one domain, but there will be more in the near future.
Can you explain how to implement that?

Do I have to repeat anything of the actions above when I implement the new firmware?

RonaldJ · Post by **RonaldJ** » 08 Feb 2008, 14:27

I have succesfully implemented the Bubba as E-mailserver!

Two more questions:

1. Is there a chance of SMTP relaying?
2. Is there a log made by the mailserver?

RonaldJ · Post by **RonaldJ** » 12 Feb 2008, 08:17

tor wrote:(Note however that this will only work when you receive mail for a single domain. If multiple domains is involved a virtual setup is needed)
/Tor

Could you please tell me how to do that?

Another question:
I have several e-mailadresses. It works ok when receiving mail. But when I send mail using one of the other adresses, it is either not sent, or there is no copy in the 'Sent' folder.

e.g:
My normal adress is ronald@somedomain.net
I also use john@somedomain.net, which mail ends up nicely in my mailbox using Tor's directions mentioned above.
When I send a mail as john@somedomain.net there is no copy being placed in the Sent box of ronald@somdomain.net. How do I do that?

eeeuser1 · Post by **eeeuser1** » 13 Feb 2008, 06:59

RonaldJ wrote: Another question:
I have several e-mailadresses. It works ok when receiving mail. But when I send mail using one of the other adresses, it is either not sent, or there is no copy in the 'Sent' folder.

For this bit, it's not faulty, you just need to configure it in your options. I agree though, thats it's a bit obtuse to figure out.

Jeff

Ubi · Post by **Ubi** » 14 Feb 2008, 10:32

Just to clarify, the 'outbox' is not a feature of the mail server but of the client. The postfix mail server never ever deletes mail. It either rjects it, or delivers it, or returns it. Maybe it returned it to the wrong user. Check the mail logs (/var/log/mail or something like that) to see what happened to your message

Ubi

bjorn · Post by **bjorn** » 14 Feb 2008, 16:48

I can really recommend "The book of postfix". Sold at amazon, and other bookstores online. Covers most there is to know about Postfix

RonaldJ · Post by **RonaldJ** » 14 Feb 2008, 17:01

Thank you, but I will look around a bit on the internet first.
I have been spoiled by a very good mailserver these last years, and it will take time to get used to doing things the hard way....