Ubuntu Tutorials

Some time ago I blogged about configuring Postfix to relay outgoing email through your gmail account. One of the commenters left a question asking how to achieve the same result, but use unique relays for each account attempting to send email. I’ve only just now been able to find time to write up an answer and find a good solution. This post will outline how to configure specific users of your mail server to relay through unique providers for outgoing email. For example:

user1@server1.com must relay through smtp.isp1.com
user2@server2.com must relay through mail.isp2.org
user3@server3.com must relay through mx.isp3.net
all others must relay through the default, smtp.hugecorp.biz

note: This is only supported on Postfix version v2.3+ and later. If you are using a recent version of Ubuntu or Debian you should be fine. To find out your current installed version you can run:

dpkg -l postfix


Step 1

Open your main.cf file:

vim /etc/postfix/main.cf


Add these lines to the configuration:

smtp_sender_dependent_authentication = yes
sender_dependent_relayhost_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/relayhost_map
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/passwd
relayhost = [smtp.hugecorp.biz]:submission


Step 2

Create /etc/postfix/relayhost_map file:

vim /etc/postfix/relayhost_map


Append entries for each unique sender => isp relay mapping you need. (note: our default relay, smtp.hugecorp.biz, is not included here):

# Per-sender provider
user1@server1.com [smtp.isp1.com]
user2@server2.com [mail.isp2.org]
user3@server3.com [mx.isp3.net]


Step 3

Update the /etc/postfix/passwd file with the user authentication information:

# Per-sender authentication
user1@server1.com user1@server1.com:SecretP@ssw0rd1
user1@server2.com user2@server2.com:SecretP@ssw0rd2
user1@server3.com user2@server3.com:SecretP@ssw0rd3
# Login for the default relayhost
[smtp.hugecorp.biz] defaultUsername:defaultPassword


Step 4
Hash the config files. Restart Postfix:

postmap hash:/etc/postfix/passwd
postmap hash:/etc/postfix/relayhost_map
/etc/init.d/postfix reload

Following these instructions you should be able to configure each of your users, or a specific subset of users, to relay their outgoing email through specific ISPs or even specific gmail accounts.  If my previous post is too limited for you–you don’t want everything authenticating and relaying through a single gmail account–these instructions should give you more flexibility.

Source: nixCraft

If this article has been helpful, please consider linking to it.

I’ve got a few servers in different places around the country and try to monitor them using the logwatch utility.  One problem that I’ve run into however is that a few of these servers are not able to send their logwatch emails to me, based on email restrictions by the ISPs.  I spent some time this afternoon researching what was required to have my servers authenticate to my gmail account and send me the mail that way.  This setup assumes Ubuntu 8.04 (or later) and Postfix.

Install the required packages

sudo aptitude install postfix libsasl2 ca-certificate libsasl2-modules

Configure Postfix

This tutorial will not outline how to configure your postfix server, but we’ll jump directly to the relayhost section.  You’ll want to add the following lines to your /etc/postfix/main.cf file:

relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
smtp_use_tls = yes

The above lines are telling Postfix that you want to relay mail through gmail on a specific port, telling it to authenticate, and where to find the username and password.  The last three lines specify the authentication types supported, where the certificate authority file is and that it should use tls.

Define Username and Password

Next we’ll need to populate the sasl_passwd file.  Create the file /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd with the following contents:

[smtp.gmail.com]:587    user.name@gmail.com:password

This file should have restrictive permissions and then needs to be translated into a .db that Postfix will read.

sudo chmod 400 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd


At this point you can restart Postfix and it should work, however it will complain about not being able to authenticate the certificate.  To take care of this issue we’ll use the ca-certificate package we installed and tell it where it can validate the certificate.

cat /etc/ssl/certs/Thawte_Premium_Server_CA.pem | sudo tee -a /etc/postfix/cacert.pem

Go ahead and reload postfix (sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload) and you should be set.

I was just setting up Evolution again and went through the steps of setting up my personal account and my Ubuntu account.  I’ve heard some people run into problems doing this considering the Ubuntu account, on the incoming side, is bound to your default address in Launchpad, but you still need to send mail out.  Here is how I did it.

note: as you’ve likely noticed I don’t do a lot of screen shots on this blog primarily because I can’t ever get the formatting to look the way I’d like.  As you see below some of the text is not properly displaying under each picture, but tries to display to the right.  I’ve been fighting it for hours.  I finally decided to just post as-is.  If you have any suggestions on WP formatting with graphics let me know.

Creating an Outbound-Only Account in Evolution

1. To create a secondary account to be used for sending mail (one that does not require receiving), we’ll need to open the Preferences Window, which is found in Edit > Preferences.



2. Click “Add”, which will open the Account Assistant for creating new email account settings.  Click “Forward” on the first introductory window.



3. Fill out the Identity information, ie; Full Name and your outbound email address.  In this case I am using my ubuntu.com address.  Click “Forward”.



4. On the “Recieving Email” step we will set the Server Type to “None”, and click “Forward”.



5. On the “Sending Email” step we will populate your SMTP settings.  In my case I am using my gmail account as the outbound SMTP server.  Click “Forward”.



6. On the “Account Management” step we will give this account a unique name.  In this case “Ubuntu”.



7. Click “Forward” and then “Apply” and you should be finished.

You can then repeat these steps for the total number of accounts that you need send-access with while the reply-to still goes elsewhere.  I’ve been using this setup for my Ubuntu account for a few years now and its simple enough, and quick to setup.

The steps are slightly different if you’re using Thunderbird.  Maybe I can get that installed here soon and walk through those steps as well.  Enjoy.

I set up Evolution again today to tie into my gmail IMAP but I notice the performance is terribly slow. Does anyone else have this same issue? I’ve been using webmail for some time now, is that comparing apples to oranges? If anyone has any tips on speeding up Evolution when tied into Gmail’s IMAP I would appreciate hearing about them.

For any of you running the Thunderbird 2.x series, perhaps based on my tutorial on manually installing the latest Thunderbird, there has been a security patch released today.  Below are instructions on upgrading manually, and a quick outline of some of the major security fixes.

Upgrading

Download Thunderbird (Save as...)

sudo tar -C /opt -zxvf ~/Desktop/thunderbird-*

One of the security patches looks specific to Windows, but the other could be Linux related.  They are outlined below:

MFSA 2007-23 Remote code execution by launching Firefox from Internet Explorer

MFSA 2007-18 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption

Note: manually installing Thunderbird or any other application not from the official Ubuntu repository limits the level of support that can be received from the community.  Please keep this in mind or know what you are doing.

First line: thanks to bordy for piecing this together.

Now on to the business at hand. Who uses Thunderbird? Ok, a large number of you. Who uses a calendaring system? Whoa, a lot of you ehh. Well how would you like to tie Thunderbird into Google Calendar with read and write access? Cool, keep reading. You’ll be setup in five minutes. It’s really pretty painless.

Getting the Plugins

Download the Lightning Addon for Mozilla Thunderbird

Download the Google Provider Addon for Mozilla Thunderbird (requires Thunderbird 2.x, see here)

Installing the Plugins

Open Thunderbird, navigate to “Tools” and select “Addons”. Drag-and-Drop the two files you just downloaded into the box. They will ask for installation confirmation, select Yes. When these are done you’ll need to restart Thunderbird. You will be prompted with a window to do so.

Visit Google Calendar

Before we can configure your new calendar in Thunderbird we’ll need to get just a bit of data from your Google Calendar account. Login to Google Calendar (I’m assuming you already have an account, if not you’ll want to set one up.. but that is outside the context of this tutorial.)

Navigate your way to “Settings” (top right).

Navigate to “Calendars” in the Calendar Settings area.

Navigate to the calendar you want to share (as you can have multiple calendars, we need to do one at a time)

Navigate to the “Private Address” and select the XML link via right-click. Select “Copy Link Location” in your Firefox browser.

Configure Lightning

Now that you have the link to your private Google Calendar address we can configure Lightning to use it. Go back to Thunderbird now and select “New” in the Calendar tab of Lightning (bottom right, third tab).

Select “On the Network” for the location of your calendar system.

Select “Google Calendar” on the next prompt. If you don’t see a Google Calendar option you’ll want to verify that the Google Provider Addon was installed properly.

Paste the link we copied from Google Calendar (the XML we copied just in the section previous) into the “Location” box.

The next step will ask for a calendar name and color. I’ll leave that part up to you.

The last step is providing Lightning / Thunderbird with your Google Calendar username and password for Google Calendar. The username should have been auto-harvested from the link you pasted, but the password will be needed.

Using Your Calendar

At this point you should be able to create appointments within Lightning and they’ll very quickly propogate to Google Calendar. To get started select the Calendar tab within Lightning, right-click on a date and time and select New. I’m sure you can take it from here.. Enjoy.

(some of these steps taken from here.)

Some of you may remember that I went on a Mutt kick there a while back and gave up for a few different reasons. I have been using Thunderbird 2.x series since, which has been pretty good, but I still think all mail clients suck. I don’t know exactly what it is about them– maybe I just don’t like email in general.

Anyway, last nite I got to thinking about Mutt again and what I didn’t like about it. One of my main complaints is that it relies on postfix and relays through your local machine. I would prefer if it were able to send outgoing through one of my many domains, my ISP, etc. Granted I still have a few other complaints with Mutt, but this tutorial will take care of the mail relaying anyway.

In this tutorial I’ll outline installing, configuring and using ESMTP to handle your outgoing mail. This will allow you to send your email, via Mutt, through gmail, your ISP, or some other mail relay that you have access to. I’ll outline using gmail here, but you should easily be able to customize it for your own needs.

Install and Configure ESMTP

First we’ll replace postfix with ESMTP for our mail relaying. Use a command such as the one below to install ESMTP, which should auto-remove postfix.

sudo aptitude install esmtp

On the Ubuntu 6.06.1 server that I tested this on it auto-removed postfix at this point. If dependencies or packages have changed since then you might find different results. I have yet to test on current (Ubuntu 7.04).

We can now configure esmtp to use your ISP or, in this case, to use a gmail account to send email through.

Open and edit a new file in your home folder called $HOME/.esmtprc (there is also a global in /etc/esmtprc).

To use gmail for your outgoing mail set your $HOME/.esmtprc to the following settings:

identity username@gmail.com

hostname smtp.gmail.com:587

username "username@gmail.com"

password "password"

starttls required

mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T"

You’ll need to set the permissions on this file to private before esmtp will function properly.  Use this command to set the permissions:

chmod 0600 .esmtprc

After you’ve done this you need to tell Mutt to use these settings. You can do this by setting a symlink from what Mutt normally looks for in sendmail to the new esmtp, or we can just tell it the path within the mutt configuration file. We’ll do the latter here. Add the following two lines into your .muttrc file:

set sendmail="/usr/bin/esmtp"

set envelope_from=yes

or (if you want debug logging done during testing)

set sendmail="/usr/bin/esmtp -v -X /tmp/esmtp.log"

Now one last thing that needs to be done here is put the Gmail Certificate Authority (CA) in the proper place so that the tls will work for encrypted outgoing connection. If you are not using gmail you may not need this step. Run the following commands to put the CA in the proper place for use by ESMTP and the gmail connection.

mkdir ~/.authenticate

chmod 0700 ~/.authenticate

sudo aptitude install ca-certificates (this may already be in place, it was on my Dapper machine)

cp -a /etc/ssl/certs/ ~/.authenticate/ca

chmod -R go-rwx ~/.authenticate/ca

At this point Mutt should be configured to use ESMTP for outgoing mail and will relay through whatever host you specify (that you have access to, of course). You can test this by opening Mutt and trying to send a message. Check the /tmp/esmtp.log for details on troubleshooting or whether or not things worked as planned. Of course you’ll need the logging configured as above to troubleshoot this.

This, I think, solves one of my major concerns with Mutt and makes it a bit more flexible for my needs. I may come back to Mutt for a while… at least until I get tired of it again and come to another client looking for something more. It’s inevitable considering all mail clients suck, right?

(much of these instructions were based on information in the esmtp manual, see there for more details.)

Since my exodus yesterday from Mutt I have installed and am playing with Thunderbird 2 for email. So far I don’t hate it like I did 1.5, but we’re still in the test stages. We’ll see how it all turns out. In any event I wanted to share with you how I installed Thunderbird 2 manually since it is not yet in the Ubuntu repositories.

1. Download Thunderbird 2. (Save to disk)
2. sudo tar -C /opt -zxvf ~/Desktop/thunderbird-*
3. sudo ln -s /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/local/bin/thunderbird
4. create a menu item: sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Thunderbird
Comment=Thunderbird Mail Client
Exec=thunderbird
Icon=/opt/thunderbird/icons/mozicon16.xpm
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Applications;Network

Enjoy the latest build while we wait for the official package to come down the pipe. You can be sure I’ll keep you updated on my thoughts on Thunderbird 2.

The Ubuntu Wiki has similar instructions and also contains details on having the repository version and the manually installed version side by side. See “Thunderbird New Version“.

To update based on my earlier post concerning use of the Mutt email client I wanted to share some of the quick tips that I’ve learned.  Now, Mutt can be very complex and very granular in its configuration.  This is by no means a comprehensive overview of Mutt usage.  I mainly want to point out some of its basic uses, navigation and configuration and you can go from there.

Now, why in the world would I want to use a text-based email client?  It’s 2007 already.  We’re using Feisty with Beryl and can burn our windows into oblivion upon closing.  We can spin our cubes of virtual desktops until we’re motion sick.  Ohh, and let’s not forget that Mozilla just released the long awaited Thunderbird 2.0!  So, despite all this, why would I bother spending any time on the text based Mutt client?  One, because I can (isn’t that the driving reason behind half of what we do sometimes!) and two, because it can come in handy.  I’ve actually grown now to prefer it over Evolution or Thunderbird… but I’ll let you decide for yourself.

First of all, the thing that held me up, was not knowing how to access my account when I first opened Mutt.  No in-application config to create your inbox settings and no handy ‘wizard’ to walk you through.  So that led me to asking questions and doing a bit of reading.  Here are a few of the methods I found for accessing your mail accounts:

mutt -f protocol://username:password(optional)@mail.server.com

mutt -f pops://christer.edwards@pop.gmail.com (example gmail setup, replace with your user)

mutt -f imaps://christer@mail.imapserver.com (example imap account access, user your own settings)

Again, these are examples and you’ll need to replace the sections with your own settings.  Account types that are supported, pop, pops, imap, imaps and local mail (ie; Maildir, /var/mail/user, etc).

Using this format, without the password, will prompt you for the password once you’ve connected to the server and you’ll see a listing of any email in your inbox.  Some of the basic commands are listed across the top of the screen within Mutt, and for more you can press ?.  Some of the basics:

d - delete selected message

m - compose message

h - toggle header detail

q - quit current message / quit mutt

r - reply to single user

g - reply to group (ie; mailing list)

u - undelete message tagged for deletion

v - view attachments (if email has attachment, of course)

s - save email or attachment

Again, I don’t mean to be comprehensive in the shortcut keys and usage of mutt, but those should get you around for the most part.

This’ll be enough for today, but I have plans for a second tutorial on some of the more useful settings within the .muttrc file.  Things such as GPG verification and signing, header settings, preferred editors, etc.

If you’d like to give mutt a try, maybe give some of the above commands a test run and shoot me an email for testing at christer DOT edwards AT ubuntu DOT com.

I’ve decided over the past few days that I wanted to learn more about and start using Mutt for my mail client.  After reading numerous pages and seeing dozens of examples of .muttrc files I’ll say that I’m still a bit lost on what I should and shouldn’t be setting.  For those of you that have experience with Mutt I’d appreciate any tips you might have.  Here is some of my basic setup.

• Gmail: I need to follow this account and be able to send as @gmail and @ubuntu from this account.
• IMAP: My office uses an IMAP server for email that I’ll also need to follow.
• From what I can tell these both need pops:// and imaps:// for connection.
• This makes two incoming accounts to track and three accounts I need to be able to send-as.  (I have already configured postfix to handle outgoing)
• I also would like to PGP sign all of these accounts and validate incoming signed emails.

I know that kind of looks like a lot.  I have much of it roughly figured out but don’t feel terribly confident about how I have it pieced together so far.  I’m do have some of these options missing..

I appreciate any help in getting this setup.  Thanks.