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Accepted
Alistair Buxton
Asked: 2012-10-14 18:23:47 +0800 CST

How to configure apache / php / postfix website emails when using vhosts?

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I have a LAMP webserver configured to serve multiple websites. Each virtual host has various PHP applications, mainly Wordpress.

When users sign up to the Wordpress sites, email is sent by PHP through to postfix, and then on to the receiver. The problem is that postfix is identifying itself to the remote server with the contents of /etc/hostname, which is not a fully qualified domain name. Some mail servers reject this and the mail bounces.

Additionally, the return path is being set to one of the vitual host domains, seemingly at random.

I could set /etc/hostname to one of the website domain names, but then the emails from the other websites would have a wrong server in the headers, and this would not fix the return-path issue.

Possibly related, apache2 says "could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name" on startup.

How do I fix this so that each website can send email without revealing the other websites hosted on the server?

Example error:

Oct 15 20:29:32 Ubuntu-1204-precise-64-minimal postfix/smtp[17214]: CD087E00DF6: to=<*****@*******.**>, relay=spool.mail.gandi.net[217.70.184.6]:25, delay=0.29, delays=0.12/0/0.09/0.07, dsn=5.5.2, status=bounced (host spool.mail.gandi.net[217.70.184.6] said: 504 5.5.2 <Ubuntu-1204-precise-64-minimal>: Helo command rejected: need fully-qualified hostname (in reply to RCPT TO command))

I have now set the FQDN in /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname, and restarted apache2 and postfix, and it still gives this same error. I don't even know where it is still getting the old hostname from as it is no longer stored anywhere on disk.

apache2

2 Answers

  1. The accepted answer got me half way, thanks. In order to make each vhost send email with the correct return path I had to add sections like this in the apache2 vhost configurations:

    <IfModule mod_php5.c>
    php_admin_value sendmail_path "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i -f [email protected]"
</IfModule>
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  2. Best Answer

    The FQDN should ideally match the reverse DNS entry for your MTA's public IP address.

    main.cf:

    myhostname = fully.qualified.domain.name
myorigin = /etc/mailname

    Make sure /etc/mailname also has the domain name.

    # cat /etc/mailname
fully.qualified.domain.name

    Then:

    postfix reload
postconf -n # to show currently running configuration
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