I'm stumped. I want to use Postfix on redhat/Fedora Core, but am not having much luck. I can send mail, but can't receive it and I can't tell why. I wish it were just the firwall, but it isn't blocking connections to port 25.

What I want:
My new server is to be used for hosting a small number of virtual websites and email accounts. I want my 5-10 remote users to be able to access their mail on the server using IMAP.

What I can do:
I can telnet to localhost port 25 on the machine and all is well
I can send mail from localhost
Receive mail sent to a local user from localhost
See no dropped packets in var/log/messages
See imap logins in the maillog every 3 minutes

What I cannot do:
receive any outside mail
telnet to IP address, host.dominname, FQDN or domainname on 25

Clues:
I think this is a virtual mail/destinations issue, but can't tell.

Any other clues would be much appreciated.

Bob

You've probably already done this, but just to be sure: Red Hat (and Fedora) default to Sendmail (or at least used to), so you might need to run redhat-switch-mail to switch to Postfix.

That out of the way, I'm no Postfix guru, but I do have a few notes on what I did. I think that the above, editing /etc/postfix/aliases, running postalias, editing /etc/postfix/main.cf, and restarting postfix were all that I did.

Among other things in main.cf that look like they might be needed I:

changed this: mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain
to this: mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, $mydomain

defined "mydomain" and "myhostname"

changed this: inet_interfaces = localhost
to this: inet_interfaces = all

and defined mynetworks like this: mynetworks = 192.168.1.0/24, 127.0.0.0/8
where the 192 network above is the one that my boxes are all on.

Probably something like one of the above changes followed by a "service postfix restart" will do it, though as I say I'm not a Postfix expert.

HTH,

Steve

I'm in the middle of trying to set up an email solution using Postfix on FC1 too. I was getting all ready to install Postfix from scratch, and overwrite the default sendmail installation, when I spotted people talking about this 'redhat-switch-mail'. So I've used that to switch over to Postfix, and it seems to be working.

However, I was wondering what exactly redhat-switch-mail does when it switches from sendmail to Postfix (or the other way around!). While it's great that we have utilities like redhat-switch-mail, I'm always a bit wary of relying on graphical programs and not really understanding what's going on under the hood. So, just to satisfy my curiosity, what would I have to do to 'switch' from sendmail to Postfix manually at the command line?

Specifically: what config files need to be changed to switch between MTAs? Something in xinetd so that the correct mail programs are invoked? What else? And what does redhat-switch-mail do with the sendmail binaries? Does it just back-up the sendmail versions and overwrite them with the Postfix versions, or does it do something more sophisticated?

Yes, I'm a newbie.