Postfix setup onMandriva 2008.1

explorer · 10-10-2008, 03:03 PM

Im trying to get an inhouse email server going using postfix which I have never done before. all of the examples Ive found want you to test the postfix setup with telnet. I can get telnet server started with "chkconfig telnet on", but when i try to test postfix with telnet, "telnet localhost 25" it hangs as if the connection isnt allowed, but I get no errors. when I try to telnet in remotely, it says unencrypted connections are not allowed and closes the connection, even though telnet is running. is there anything else I can use besides telnet to test postfix, or can I temporarily enable unencrypted connections ? how ?

Unknown_User · 10-10-2008, 03:50 PM

Have you considered using OpenSSH?

http://www.openssh.com/

I'm not sure what distro you are using but I'm sure that you have found that there are a lot of posts in distro forums relating to this problem;

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=477234

also;

http://postfix.cloud9.net/faq.html (search for telnet)

Hope this helps...

billymayday · 10-10-2008, 04:15 PM

You don't need the telnet server - you test with the telnet client. Turn the server back off.

So start postfix (or whatever), and telnet localhost 25 as per the instructions

All you are trying to do is see what responses the server give. Telnet client is simply pretending to be a mail client.

Check your mail logs to see if there is any record of a dialogue.

Is postfix running ("netstat -nalp | grep :25" will tell you)

explorer · 10-10-2008, 04:20 PM

thanks for the replies,

[root@mailweb mail]# netstat -nal | grep :25
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

billymayday · 10-10-2008, 04:42 PM

OK, so it's there.

What is the exact dialogue if you try

telnet localhost 25?

Here's what you should expect

Code:

# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 server.example.com ESMTP Postfix

Type "quit" to exit.

explorer · 10-12-2008, 12:14 AM

thanks billy. I guess I didn't realize that the connection was good and it was waiting for me to enter a command. Like I said, I didn't have any experience with setting up a mailserver. Anyway, I found a guide, especially for mandriva at the link below. Once I followed the setup from this web page I got my mail server going and now I kind of see how it all works. Here is the link for anyone else looking to setup a mailserver...

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-se...riva-2008.1-p5

just scroll down about 1/4 of the way down the page to the heading:
"11 Postfix With SMTP-AUTH And TLS; Dovecot"

and follow all of the steps and it should work with no problem...

Again, thank you all...