[Workaround.org] Corrections/Thoughts for Lenny ISP Mail Tutorial
Mark Phillips
mark at phillipsoasis.com
Sat Jun 27 18:21:13 CEST 2009
Christoph,
A few notes from my experiences following the Lenny tutorial. And some
questions. I am running a fresh install of Lenny on Linode.com. Not sure if
running the xen kernal makes a difference, but it shouldn't for what I ran
into.
Just installed mysql-server on a fresh Lenny. I ran into this problem. The
installation asked for a "root" password. Even dpkg-reconfigure just asks
for a "root" password. But, I could not login with this password. The only
way I could get in was to restart mysql with the --skip-grant-tables option.
I checked the user table, and did not find a "root" user but instead a
"debian-sys-maint" user. This user is required for the init.d/mysql scripts
to work. The password for this user is found in /etc/mysql/debian.cnf. The
only way I could add the root user was to stop mysql, start with the
--skip-grant-tables option, then manually add the root user, flush
privileges, and restart mysql. I don't remember having this problem on Etch.
After installing mutt, I cannot read any email. I get the error "could not
create temporary file" when I select an email to read. The "m" option
returns "/tmp/mutt-li84-151-1000-1669-1: Permission denied (errno = 13)".
All I did was apt-get install mutt. do I have to set permissions somewhere
for it to write to /tmp?
One question. What is the password stored in the mysql tables? You say in
the tutorial:
> The user field will contain the part of an email address before the '@'.
> And the password field will contain an MD5 hash of the user's password.
OK, but when I was testing the postfix installation, I was able to telnet
from user wayne and send an email to user mark with a bogus password in the
password field for mark in the virtual users table. The email was stored in
mark's Maildir. The scripts all work, but the password seems to be
superfluous.
Postfix does not use maildir automatically, but mbox. You don't mention
either one, so are you assuming the user wants mbox instead of maildir? From
my reading, maildir is perhaps a little better. If I am stepping into a
"religious war" here, please just say so and we need not discuss it further!
:-) I set up my postifx installation to use maildir by personal choice.
One concern I have is whether the "out of the box" installation of postfix
is relay proof. I know it can send email from the outside world, but does
one have to make any configuration changes to prevent the server from
becoming an unwitting email relay for spammers to use? I don't think it does
because I tried to telnet in from a computer on the Internet and I could
not. Also, in the logs it says "relay=local". You may want to add a note
about this in the tutorial.
Anyway, with only a few bumps in the road, I believe I have postfix and
mysql working and talking to each other. Great job so far!!!
Mark
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