Home / server / Questions / 60167
Accepted
Stefan Kendall
Asked: 2009-08-29 14:03:49 +0800 CST

Postfix - sending emails to external domains?

  • 772

I want to redirect my system mail to my gmail account, and I've setup postfix on an ubuntu server in an attempt to do so. However, when I telnet to 25 and send emails, the emails just appear to queue, and when I create a .forward entry in my user's home directory, the forwarded email is never received. Now, if I remove the .forward, I do indeed receive the email, which leads me to think something is going awry.

What could be going wrong? I'm new to postfix.

After removing a bad virtual name,

Aug 29 02:02:41 li64-245 postfix/qmgr[20838]: 8F63460458: from=<[email protected]>, size=1977, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Aug 29 02:02:41 li64-245 postfix/local[20869]: 82C3460323: to=<[email protected]>, relay=local, delay=0.13, delays=0.08/0/0/0.05, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (forwarded as 8F63460458)
Aug 29 02:02:41 li64-245 postfix/qmgr[20838]: 82C3460323: removed
Aug 29 02:02:42 li64-245 postfix/smtp[20870]: 8F63460458: to=<[email protected]>, orig_to=<[email protected]>, relay=gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[209.85.212.44]:25, delay=1.4, delays=0.05/0.01/0.11/1.2, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 OK 1251511363 10si2655905vws.3)
Aug 29 02:02:42 li64-245 postfix/qmgr[20838]: 8F63460458: removed
Aug 29 02:03:11 li64-245 postfix/smtpd[20865]: disconnect from mail-gx0-f216.google.com[209.85.217.216]

Yet I receive no emails in personal. What gives? I've set a manual .forward entry for user test.

EDIT: Gmail will not allow the responder to auto-forward back to the sender. Switching email accounts, I was about to receive the forwarded mail.

linux email smtp

4 Answers

  1. from what I know, gmail does not accept mail from servers which don't have FQDN (fully qualified domain name) having checked this one, you could look in the postfix logs - /var/log/maillog or /var/log/mail.log - for the reason of not delivering mail

    • 1

  2. In postfix/main.cf, check your myhostname, mydomain, myorigin values to make sure they are set correctly.

    Second thought, who is your ISP? For people with DSL and cable modems, certain ISP are now blocking outbound SMTP on port 25 to prevent spamming. From your Linux box, try connecting to port 25 on Google's mail server (use dig mx gmail.com to find a machine name).

    • 1

  3. On one console window, type

    sudo tail -f /var/log/maillog

    On another console window, type

    echo "testing" | mail -s "test email" [email protected]

    Then switch back to the first console to see what's happening, as it's happening.

    Also, if you're just forwarding your accounts, you can edit your /etc/aliases like:

    root: [email protected]

    postmaster: [email protected]

    But what you see in the mail log is probably show you what the problem is.

    • 1
  4. Best Answer
    Aug 29 00:31:12 li64-245 postfix/error[20676]: 31BEC60456: to=<[email protected]>, relay=none, delay=0.02, delays=0.01/0/0/0.01, dsn=5.0.0, status=bounced (User unknown in virtual alias table)

    This looks like your local server is accepting the mail for [email protected] (0.02 delay and error response) and bouncing it. Did you setup a virtual for gmail?

    What is the output of postconf -n?

    • 1