If you want to use a Gmail account as a free SMTP server on your Ubuntu-Linux server, you will find this article useful. This guide is tested with Ubuntu 14.04. If you face any issue, feel free to use comments-section below.
Step 1 -First, install all necessary packages
sudo apt-get install postfix mailutils libsasl2-2 ca-certificates libsasl2-modules
If you do not have postfix installed before, postfix configuration wizard will ask you some questions. Just select your server as Internet Site and for FQDN use something like mail.example.com
Step -2 Then open your postfix config file:
vim /etc/postfix/main.cf
add following lines to it:
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
You might have noticed that we haven’t specified our Gmail username and password in above lines. They will go into a different file. Open/Create
vim /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
And add following line:
[smtp.gmail.com]:587 USERNAME@gmail.com:PASSWORD
If you want to use your Google App’s domain, please replace @gmail.com with your @domain.com
Step -3 Fix permission and update postfix config to use sasl_passwd file
sudo chmod 400 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
Step -4 validate certificates to avoid running into error. Just run following command
cat /etc/ssl/certs/Thawte_Premium_Server_CA.pem | sudo tee -a /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
Step -5
Finally, reload postfix config for changes to take effect:
sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload
Testing -
If you have configured everything correctly, following command should generate a test mail from your server to your mailbox.
echo "Test mail from postfix" | mail -s "Test Postfix" you@example.com
Step 1 -First, install all necessary packages
sudo apt-get install postfix mailutils libsasl2-2 ca-certificates libsasl2-modules
If you do not have postfix installed before, postfix configuration wizard will ask you some questions. Just select your server as Internet Site and for FQDN use something like mail.example.com
Step -2 Then open your postfix config file:
vim /etc/postfix/main.cf
add following lines to it:
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
You might have noticed that we haven’t specified our Gmail username and password in above lines. They will go into a different file. Open/Create
vim /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
And add following line:
[smtp.gmail.com]:587 USERNAME@gmail.com:PASSWORD
If you want to use your Google App’s domain, please replace @gmail.com with your @domain.com
Step -3 Fix permission and update postfix config to use sasl_passwd file
sudo chmod 400 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
Step -4 validate certificates to avoid running into error. Just run following command
cat /etc/ssl/certs/Thawte_Premium_Server_CA.pem | sudo tee -a /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
Step -5
Finally, reload postfix config for changes to take effect:
sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload
Testing -
If you have configured everything correctly, following command should generate a test mail from your server to your mailbox.
echo "Test mail from postfix" | mail -s "Test Postfix" you@example.com
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