Welcome the ISPmail forum

Thanks for visiting workaround.org. This forum can be used to ask questions regarding the ISPmail tutorials. It is a replacement for the workaround-chitchat mailing list.

Feel free to ask any questions here. To avoid spam you need to sign up here before posting. Thanks.

 Christoph

Some time ago I followed your

Some time ago I followed your tutorial from workaround.org to install on a debian lenny a postfix with virtual domains(my postconf -n its on http://pastebin.com/d1c320985)

. I created one single virtual domain (domain1.com)and I configured the DNS server(wich is on the same machine that this postfix installation) with the domain zone file as its explained in the tutorial with the SPF like domain.com.          IN  TXT  "v=spf1 ip4:1.1.1.1/27 -all" and also a PTR entry(the DNS file its on http://pastebin.com/m287f8709 ). This domani works fine. But some days ago I installed a second domain (DNS FILE IN http://pastebin.com/m3b2d06e2). It recieve emails without problem but when I try to send emails to some mx like the mx from yahoo my emails are considered like spam and some mx directly don't accept the emails form that second domain. my syslog give this msg: http://pastebin.com/mb3e84fa and I supose that its related with the reverse DNS request. if this is true and the problem its related with the PTR entry, one IP can have several PTR records? how I have to configure my server to serve severeal domain with one IP address and to don't be mark like spam to yahoos servers or other ones?¿thanks again for reading this lines.

Solved

There was no problem, at list from our postfix installation. The problem came from costumer side and from my ignorance reading logs. Our costumer didn't had a good configuration on his mail client. At the begeining I dind't found the mistake on our mail.log and at the end yes... 


Sorry for the people who read this lines and tryed to understand our case and couldn't find the problem. Thanks to all of you also for reading this lines.

Alberto M.

Dovecot authentication

Hallo,

da mein schriftliches Englisch nicht ausreicht, versuche ich es mal auf Deutsch. Ich bin nach den howto ISP-style email service using Postfix 2.5 (Debian Lenny)  vorgegangen. Bis auf  "authentication" ist alles gut gegangen. Leider erhalte ich beim testen über telnet localhost smtp immer folgende Fehlermeldung:
535 5.7.8 Error: authentication failed

In der /var/log/mail.log finde ich folgendes vor:
 postfix/smtpd[3114]: connect from localhost[127.0.0.1]
 postfix/smtpd[3114]: warning: localhost[127.0.0.1]: SASL plain authentication failed:
 postfix/smtpd[3114]: disconnect from localhost[127.0.0.1]

was mir auch nicht gerade weiter hilft. Hat jemand von euch eine Ahnung und kann mir weiterhelfen? Wäre wirklich super! Kann auch in Englisch sein.

Danke

mfg Hansruedi

same problem

unrivalled tutorial, thanks a lot for all your time and efforts! I'm having the same problem. I followed the tutorial pretty much step by step, on a Debian Lenny system. Everything works fine, except smtp authentication. mail.log says: Aug 3 11:38:45 myHost postfix/smtpd[9503]: connect from 12345.dip0.t-ipconnect.de[12.34.56.78] Aug 3 11:38:48 myHost dovecot: auth-worker(default): mysql: Connected to 127.0.0.1 (mailserver) Aug 3 11:38:50 myHost postfix/smtpd[9503]: warning: 12345.dip0.t-ipconnect.de[12.34.56.78]: SASL PLAIN authentication failed: Aug 3 11:38:52 myHost postfix/smtpd[9503]: warning: 12345.dip0.t-ipconnect.de[12.34.56.78]: SASL LOGIN authentication failed: UGFzc3dvcmQ6 Aug 3 11:39:00 myHost postfix/smtpd[9503]: disconnect from 12345.dip0.t-ipconnect.de[12.34.56.78] Fetching emails via POP3 works fine with the same username/password. Any hints on where the error might be located would be much appreciated.

SSL certificate?

Hi all,

(a bit weird I have to comment on the one and only existing topic, instead of being able to start a new topic...) 

 

I have followed http://workaround.org/ispmail/lenny to the letter and it works like a charm. However, I now would like to get a 'real' (instead of a self-signed) SSL certificate so that imaps/pops visitors don't get certificate warnings.

Do I implement this certificate in Dovecot, or in Postfix? Or in both? If in both, will 1 certificate do, or do I need 2?

Any suggestions on where to get a reasonably priced one? And on how to implement it in the system as mentioned on http://workaround.org/ispmail/lenny ?

 

Greetings,

   Evert

ssl certificates

A reasonably priced certificate can be found here: www.[dot]freessl[dot]com .

One certificate will be enough, as long as it is for the same domain. The certificate can be used for all instances (web server, mail server etc).

See https://ssl[dot]trustwave.com/support/install-certificate.php for installation instructions.

Outgoing quota policy

Hi all :)

I would like to implement an Outgoing quota policy per user, every user has own quota sending mail, like:

user1 max 100 mails per day
user2 max 300 mails per day
...

Policyd ( http://www.policyd.org ) should do this work, anyone know a better/easy way to do this?

Thanks,

Marco

One domain doesn't get any mail

Hi,

I have followed this tutorial and it works fine. Exept one domain, which doesn't work at all. Not even one address with that domain.

The mails reach my server. I can forward them with the entry in the table "virtual-aliases".

But, if they shall get into the normal folder, it doesn't get there. And, of course, the recipient does not get the mail. The sender doesn't get any errormessage.

I have checked the rights in that folder and I created the DB-entries once again, but it doesn't help.

The only difference I can see is, that the domain in question is a .com-address. But I can not imagine, that that has a consequence.

Can somebody please help?

 

Thank you

Christian

RBL !!!

Christoph I cannot send emails to the list anymore !

<workaround-chitchat@workaround.org>: host mx.workaround.org[...]
    said: 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [....] blocked
    using dnsbl-2.uceprotect.net; Net 88.160.0.0/11 is UCEPROTECT-Level2 listed
    because 3859 abusers are hosted by PROXAD AS for Proxad/Free ISP/AS12322
    there. See: http://www.uceprotect.net/rblcheck.php?ipr=IP(in
    reply to RCPT TO command)

This is Emmanuel Revah, please avoid using fascist blacklists, they prevent legitimate emails from getting through as you can see.

ClamAV Upgrade Needed on ETCH Server

As of 15 April 2010 the antivirus packages ClamAV 0.94.x and older stopped our ETCH server today.

All ClamAV releases older than 0.95 are affected by a bug in freshclam which prevents incremental updates from working with signatures longer...   http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/2009/10/05/eol-clamav-094/

Apt-get the correct packages fixes it.

apt-get install clamav clamav-base clamav-daemon clamav-freshclam libclamav6

How to disable Amavis/Clamav but keep SpamAssassin working?

As many, I suffered the EOL process of 0.94 and older versions of clamav. I successfully upgraded to 0.96 but due to a bug or an issue I'm not able to use it. I disabled Amavis and clamav in order to keep receiving my mails. I would like to keep SpamAssasing working but I did not find any solution. Is there a way to disable Amavis or just Clamav and keep SpamAssassin doing its work?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Christian

It's the amavis conf

Comment out all the clamav stanzas in amavis conf except for the las one that says basically just mark it clean and move on. Then amavis keeps running but it never invokes clamav and you're just running w/o clamav.

I just solved that issue

I just solved that issue today on a openSuSe 10.3 System. In /etc/amavisd.conf

I uncommented (removed #):

@bypass_virus_checks_maps = (1); 

commented out: (added #)

$QUARANTINEDIR = '/var/spool/amavis/virusmails'; 

 virus_admin_maps => ["virusalert\@$mydomain"],

$virus_admin = "virusalert\@$mydomain";

email spoofing

Hi,


I'm french, sorry for my modest english.


I have followed this tutorial : ISP-style email service using Postfix 2.3 (Debian Etch)

and my server works fine for nearly 2 years. But, there is a problem I didn't fix yet :

the email spoofing : even if smtp authentification is enable, users of local domains receive spams

from there own domain.

For example : joe@example.net receives spam from joe@example.net .

And it's why I have to stop my crontab script which teach SpamAssassin ham and spam, because

due to what I notice above mails from example.net are henceforth considered like spams.

So, my question is how to configure postix to avoid spoofing.

Thanks,

errors

Hi

Thanks for the tut.

I've tried to avoid posting.

Most of the time with some good old effort,  I manage to get from one step to the next.

But this one I can't get.

I am working on the page

Set up Dovecot

when i run

/etc/init.d/dovecot restart

I keep getting errors as follows

Error in configuration file: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf line 1004 Unknown section type

(section changed in /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf at line 753)

Fatal: Invalid configuration in /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

 

Here is what I have for line 753

protocol lda {

log_path = /var/vmail/dovecot-deliver.log

auth_socket_path = /var/run/dovecot/auth-master

postmaster_address = postmaster@ezhostin.com

mail_plugins = cmusieve

}        <---this is line 753--->

 

Here is what i have for line 1004

passdb sql {               <---this is linw 1004--->

args = /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf

#Path for SQL configuration file

}

 

Thanks all

AND SPECIAL THANKS TO

Christoph

Hope i put this in the correct spot

Brackets?

Hi, Jason…

glad you like the tutorial. I assume that you did the mistake I do all the time - mixing up the brackets. Please cound that every opening bracket "{" corresponds to a closing bracket "}". Then you should be fine.

old email conversion to this scheme

Same as everyone else: Thanks for a great tutorial.


I've set up my debian box just as you explained. Each virtual user has a mail box in this format:

/var/vmail/domain.tld/user/mail/inbox  /sent /drafts /trash, etc.

Additionally there's

/var/vmail/domain.tld/user/mail/.imap/INBOX /Sent /spam /Trash

 

2 questions:

1. What's the differnce between the two (I don't recall making the .imap directory).

2. more importantly...I'm moving my users from Red Hat which has a single mail file:

/var/mail/user


There appears to be no sub-directiories. Uisng Thunderbird, somehow, someway it must know what's in the Sent
 directory, and which is in the inbox, etc. I tried to search, but not sure exactly what to search for -- I'd like to convert the single mail file to the format that you laid out... having mail in individual sub-dirs like you've outlined in your tutorial. (Hope I'm making sense).

 

Thanks again!

Conversion process

Ok, in addressing situation/question #2 ....

Looks as if I want to convert from mbox format to maildir format.

I tried imapsync without much success, but since I already moved the mbox file onto the new server I could use some local script.

I also tried perfect_maildir.pl but it was throwing errors and I decided it was time to search for dovecot speciific solutions. Came up with

http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration/MailFormat

and it's specific use/mod of mb2md.pl

According to a man page (http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/dapper/man1/mb2md.1.html)

I ran

/var/vmail/mb2md.pl -s /var/vmail/domain.tld/user/mbox-file -d /var/vmail/domain.tld/user

successfully, or so it seems. Within the -d (destination) directory there are three sub-folders: cur, new, tmp and all the messages that  where in the one mbox file are each in their own file within the cur/ directory. There appears to be a specific naming convention to the files:

1281284945.000020.mbox:2,S -- which I take to be the UnixTimeStamp.sequential number.mbox:not sure what the #2 is (and it's the only listing in 534 converted messages),S

I'm guessing that the 'S' on the end means that it was in the "Sent" folder from the mbox file?
 The other naming convention is

1281284945.000022.mbox:2,RS -- which I'm guessing is found in the Sent folder and it was a Reply? Not really sure.

 

I was expecting the conversion process to have resulted in matching folders as what the current mbox was using (in this case Inbox,Sent,Draft,Trash), but it's throwing them all into cur/

Is there a way to get these into the directory structure that is outlined in this ISPmail tutorial?

 

Thanks.

ISPMail Migrated from Etch to Lenny, few issues

Hi,


I've migrated my config from Etch to Lenny.


I have a few issues that are difficult for me to diagnose.


1) E-mails over 10MB size don't reach their destination. Logs say amavis passes them clear, and then I get a temporary failure. I don't always recieve any info from postmaster either.

2) Whenever an e-mail address is wrong or missing, instaed of PERMANENT FAILURE I recieve a temporary failure. This fills up my logs and e-mails to postmaster like:

In:  MAIL From:<sender@domain.tld> SIZE=154995
 Out: 250 2.1.0 Ok
 In:  RCPT To:<nonexsitant-email@domain.tld>
 Out: 451 4.3.0 <nonexistant-email@domain.tld>: Temporary lookup failure
 In:  DATA
 Out: 554 5.5.1 Error: no valid recipients


This is weird, it should be a permanent failure. In logs I get:

Sep 14 22:17:48 mail postfix/smtpd[18461]: warning: mysql query failed: Table 'mailserver.view_users' doesn't exist

These two issues remain very annoying, the first one especially - in main.cf I have set the max message size to 128MB. SENDING email with size over 30MB+ through my server works fine :)

Sarge to Lenny?

Hi, has anybody changed their system from the sarge tutorial to the lenny one? how was it? easy, difficult? I'm planning on doing it this week and I'd like some comments on it.

Sarge to Lenny?

I have a doubt, I did upgrade to etch and to lenny so I am in lenny, but not the mail server tutorial (kept at Sarge), should I folllow the changes to etch and then to lenny or can I follow the changes from Sarge to Lenny directly?

Thank you.

Too many concurrent connections

Can anybody help me set up limits for delivery to certain domains ? I often see "too many concurrent connections" in my /var/log/postfix/mail.log. Most of these are from mail delivery attemtps to gmx.de users.

I read that you can limit number of connections to certain domains by first creating an /etc/postfix/transport file as such:
web.de        snailmail: Then edit /etc/postfix/master.cf as such:
snailmail     unix  -       -       n       -      5     smtp

Additionally, you can set these parameters in /etc/postfix/main.cf
schmalspur_destination_concurrency_failed_cohort_limit = 100
schmalspur_destination_concurrency_limit = 2

Finally, you need to set this parameter in /etc/postfix/main.cf:
transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport


Next active this configuration like such:
postmap /etc/postfix/transport
postfix reload

HOWEVER:
When using the ISPmail tutorial we have already set
Virtual_transport = dovecot

As I understand it I can either use "virtual_transport" OR "transport_maps" but I'm not too sure about it. Can anyone help ?

SMTP not running

Hello,


sorry for posting a comment but I was not able to create a new topic (or haven´t found it where to click ?).

Thanks for your great tutorial at: http://workaround.org/ispmail/etch


I´ve made it step by step but finally it is not working. The point is: I can login with my mail program and as I can see in the logfile it authenticates correctly and looks for my emails in the right folder. But when I want to send a message the smtp server is not running.

Yesterday when I tried it sendmail was responding when doing a "telnet localhost smtp" - today after a restart no smtp server is responding at all. That´s why I started "/etc/init.d/postfix start" but it´s not working. I guess postfix is working as a smtp, right ? Before doing your tutorial I had sendmail installed because I tried several other tutorials. I don´t get a connection to the smtp.

Can you give me a hint plz how I get this running ? Thank you. (btw I´ve got lenny running)

Regards
Charly

mark messages as read through sieve

Hi All!

After following this great tutorial I am trying to get sieve to not only sort my spam into a seperate folder, but also automatically mark all spam as read. (to avoid the new-message-notification)

 

For this I added imapflags as requirement to the sieve script and then included the line

addflag "\\Seen";

in the script.

The sorting works, the flagging doesn't. :( What's irritating me is that neither dovecot nor sieve are complaining anywhere in the logs, whereas I get a log entry when trying to set some bogus flag like addflag "\\Idontexist"; , so sieve seems to understand what I want to do and seems happy with it, but still it doesn't work.

Any Ideas?

How to rest the installation and start again from scratch

Hi there,


  I have never used popstfix dovecot nor mysql afore.  However, I have a server in a hosting company , and would like to move my email, currently managed by a 3rd party, to my own one.  I have 3 domains.

I have set-up the correct MX records and these are propigated.

I followed the guide for setting up an ISP style Email server, but predictibly somewhere along the way I made some errors.  Additionally dovecot apache and postfix have problems because I cannot set the domainname on the server (Its a virtual server with Debian  Squeeze and apparently I cannot set the domainname as said by the admins).

 

Since I have made mistakes (postfix sends email off to mx.workaround.org and example.com's email server, and dovecot never manages to create anything under /var/vmail. 

So, I have given up.   (for the moment)

I would like to reset everything and start again, but without reinstalling the O/S.   Can this be done cleanly?


Then,   instead of using example.com, which may well be part of the problem since my server does not treat these as local, I shall start with my own domain.

Cheers,f

 

three Ip-address one interface

I have Debian Lenny postfix-dovecot-mysql assembled this ISP mail tutorials, but i have one problem:

first ip-internet XXX.XXX.XXX.154

second IP - mail.mydomen1.com xxx.xxx.xxx.155

third IP - mail.mydomen2.com xxx.xxx.xxx.156

mail received on my first and second mail, but when i send mail from my domains,

any mail's sesrvers wrote me what - said: 550 We cannot accept
email from IP ХХХ.ХХХ.ХХХ.154 without a DNS PTR....

Yes of course PTR i wrote at the provider on 155 and 156 :-)

154 -only internet

please Help me :-)

real IP

yes nslookup confirm record on my provider.  I can send my real IP on your e-mail i don't want write this Mail IP- address on open - forum :))

postfix 2.7

Hi! I make update to Debian6 and Postfix 2.7. I can send outgoing email .156 and .156!

But i have new problem :-( New  incoming messages stay mail  queue with status  temporary failure...

Postfix/dovecot don't delivered to vmail-box.

Catch-All Fwd

Hi Christoph,

i got trouble to make an catch-all email forwarding. No mail arrives the postbox.

May by i think wrong, but i insert into the virtual_aliases tab:

+----+-----------+---------------+-------------------+
| id | domain_id | source        | destination       |
+----+-----------+---------------+-------------------+
|  1 |         1 | @domain.tld | erik@domain.tld |
+----+-----------+---------------+-------------------+
and in the virtual_users tab

+----+-----------+------------+----------------------------------+
| id | domain_id | user       | password                         |
+----+-----------+------------+----------------------------------+
|  1 |         1 | erik       | md5hashofpwd |
+----+-----------+------------+----------------------------------+

and in the virtual_domains tab+----+--------------+
| id | name         |
+----+--------------+
|  1 | domian.tld |
+----+--------------+

What's make i wrong?

 

Thx 4 help!

Erik

P.S.: The best tut. i found on the net!

Catch-all problem

Thx for reply Christoph.

The log says:

 

Feb 27 17:08:47 vserver postfix/smtpd[16430]: connect from xxx.tld[1.11.111.1111]

Feb 27 17:08:47 vserver postfix/smtpd[16430]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from xxx.tld[1.11.111.1111]: 550 5.1.1 <nix000@domain.tld>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual mailbox table; from=<sender@differntdomain.tld> to=<nix000@domain.tld> proto=ESMTP helo=<differntdomain.tld>

Feb 27 17:08:47 vserver1409 postfix/smtpd[16430]: disconnect from xxx.tld[1.11.111.1111]

All other seems to be work perfect. BTW, i used the etch tut.

Greetings,

Erik

spf

hi christoph!

 

got my lenny mailserver up and running. works great.

i'm having some issues with spf (FYI.. the first time i tried registering on this website the confirmation email got rejected by my server.. so i had to use an alternate email address not hosted on my server so i could post here. i'm guessing the auto-mailer that sends out your conformation email does not match spf records for workaround.org??)

ok... i'm hosting email for someone else's domain on my mailserver.. their mail clients are setup to use their own domains smtp server for outgoing mail instead of mine cause tumgreyspf drops their emails cause their local IPs are not on the domains SPF of course... this setup is working fine... the problem is i also have a squirrelmail webmail service setup on the mailserver and if they try sending mail out through that.. tumgreyspf drops mail because its reading the sender's IP as localhost 127.0.0.1.. of course that address is not on the SPF record for the domain. How can i configure tumgreyspf to pass mail from local? is this a security issue?

any help would be great!!

Thanks,

Gary

<EDIT>

fixed the problem... adding 127.0.0.1 to the postfix whitelist did the trick.

http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-whitelist-hosts-ip-addresses-in-postfix

odd.. i would have thought local was already whitelisted since its listed in mynetworks in main.cf.. and permit mynetworks is set... but whatever. now it works!

</EDIT>

local mail server

hi christoph

can i use this tutorial to be a local email server who able send

an email to the outside domain and retrieve email from hosting who i rental ?

 

thanks

Just some problem in understanding

Hi together,

first of all: Great tutorial Christoph !!!! It helped me a lot in getting warm with all that stuff.
With this I got my own Mailserver running, and now I am programming a web mail client to fetch and send mails via IMAP.

But, there is one thing where I can not follow right now, although everything is running.

- The password of the VirtualUser is saved inside the database as MD5-hash.
- so the Mailserver can authenticate me only with an MD5-hash !?

- but why does IMAP need a password in plain-text ???
- how is it possible that IMAP authenticates commands via plain-text-password when the source to compare the password (the data base) has just a MD5-hash????

It is running, but I want to know why, because I don't understand it.
Hopefully someone can tell me. And hopefully it is not that facile

Greetings
derjape

no mails delivered to GMX

Hi together,

I followed the tutorial to create my own Mailserver with virtual domains and virtual users on a

Virtual Server from Strato

But I can not send mails out to email-addresses at GMX.
I get the following in my mail.log

(lost connection with mx0.gmx.net[213.165.64.100] while receiving the initial server greeting)

After searching for hours and hours on the web I hope to find help in here.

So if someone has an idea..... I take everything !!!!!!!
Thanks

Error Message in /var/log/mail.log

Hello,

 

i used your isp-config-Tutorial for Lenny and it worked so far quite easyly.

 

But if i see the file /var/log/mail.log i should see

dovecot: Dovecot v1.0.rs15 starting up

dovecot: auth-worker(default: mysql: Connected to 127.0.0.1 (mymailserver)

 

but this does not be written down in this file.

I found there the following text:

May  2 19:43:40 mailserver dovecot: Dovecot v1.0.15 starting up
May  2 19:43:40 mailserver dovecot: auth(default): bind(/var/spool/postfix/privat/auth) failed: No such file or directory
May  2 19:43:40 mailserver dovecot: auth(default): net_listen_unix(/var/spool/postfix/privat/auth) failed: No such file or directory
May  2 19:43:40 mailserver dovecot: Auth process died too early - shutting down
May  2 19:43:40 mailserver dovecot: child 9685 (auth) returned error 89

 

what should i do, that it work fine like you write it down in your tutorial.

 

thank you 4 answering ;-)

 

But... i'm very happy to find this tutorial, because it is explain everything very fine. I dont understand the part "black-magic email2email mapping" by myself... but it is the only one, which i dont understand... and it is the only part ;)

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