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Asked: 2009-12-16 10:17:03 +0800 CST

How to redirect all outgoing email from postfix to a single address for testing

  • 772

I am setting up a testing server for a web based application that sends some email notifications.

Sometimes testing is performed with real customer data, and for that reason I need to guarantee that the server is not able to send emails to our real customers while we're testing.

What I want is to configure postfix so that it takes any outgoing email and redirects it to a single email address, instead of delivering to the real destination.

I am running Ubuntu server 9.10.

Thank you in advance

ubuntu

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Set up a local user to receive all trapped mail:

    adduser mailtrap

    You need to add in main.cf:

    transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport
luser_relay = mailtrap

    Then create /etc/postfix/transport with this in there:

    localhost :
your.hostname.example.com:
* local:mailtrap

    Save an then run: postmap /etc/postfix/transport finally restart postfix invoke-rc.d postfix restart

    All local email will be delivered normally and external email will be delivered to the local mailtrap account.

    • 21

  2. Better is to create a virtual alias file:

    In /etc/postfix/main.cf:

    virtual_alias_maps = pcre:/etc/postfix/virtual

    In /etc/postfix/virtual:

    /.*@.*/ root

    You can replace root with whichever user you'd like to receive all the outgoing e-mail. This pattern can be tweaked if you want local mail to be delivered normally (without redirection):

    /.*@(?!hostname\.localdomain$).*/ root

    Original idea found here: Postfix development server - intercept all outgoing mail

    • 10

  3. Postfix provides something called smtp-sink. By default it blackholes all of the email it receives. Later versions can also be configured to capture the email in files.

    This doesn't technically use postfix (but a utility provided by postfix.) It also doesn't technically redirect each email to a single email address. But it does capture all traffic on port 25 and dumps that to a file that can be parsed.

    • 5