Hello

Currently i'm figuring out how to send email notifications to users when services went down in Nagios. I know i need to install and configure Postfix, which i did already. I assume that when i configured to point it to "Satellite mail system" is the correct one instead of other things like "Internet.." etc. So the configurations is when you have installed the Postfix and there would pop a lot of questions right? Other than that, what have i missed?

Oh ya, i remember something. Hmm. I do not have any so-called real smtp server so would that be alright? I heard that installed and getting the Postfix running would be enough as it serves as a MTA (mail transfer agent). So if i do not have any smtp server, the relay host= ' ' what should i put it as?

Sorry, but i'm rather confused and lost.

Thanks

1. You don't have to install /postfix/, you have to install a MTA. postfix is ONE of the possible choices.

2. postfix implements SMTP (like nearly any MTA), so, depending on what you are trying to achieve, this could be enough.

One thing is IMHO missing from your problem desription: where do you want the generated mail to be delivered to? if it is on the same machine, you probably don't have to bother with a "smarthost".

Hi zirias,

Firstly, thanks for the reply, greatly appreciated (:

Hmm, I think it would be okay for the generated mail to be delivered to the same machine. As long as i could send the mail to the defined email address (xxx@hotmail.com), that would be enough i guess.

So, with that, what should i do? Hmm.

Do i have to add anything in the .cfg files? I read from some online websites/threads that we would have to add the necessary definitions in the services.cfg, contacts.cfg etc. I'm not sure.

Thanks again.

Well, I don't know postfix in particular as I am using exim, but

- *@hotmail.com definitely is not the same machine, there are some microsoft servers responsible for that domain.
- they will probably reject mail coming directly from a host on a dialup line (common anti-spam measure).

So, if you need this mail in a hotmail account, you probably HAVE to configure a "smarthost": The smtp-server your provider is giving to you. Configure postfix to send all outgoing mail through THAT host, then it should work. But if delivering the mail to the same machine would be ok, it's probably easier to set some sensible hostname and address it locally, optionally installing some imap-server like dovecot to access this local mail with thunderbird and the like.

Sounds very confusing. Hmm. So what about gmail? I just wanted things to be made easy; just setup postfix and send email notifications thats it. Cause i don't have any smtp server.

I saw this link: http://linux.about.com/od/ubusrv_doc/a/ubusg29t05.htm Could i just refer to that and do accordingly to make the email sending work?

By the way, you mentioned about exim, can it be used on ubuntu 9.10 platform as well? If can, maybe i can use that as my alternative. (:

Thanks.

If you want to use some email address that is NOT hosted on your box, you have to configure your provider's smtp server as "smarthost" -- because any other smtp server (including those of microsoft [hotmail] and google [gmail]) will reject your mails as they are coming from a dialup line. So if you absolutely MUST have these emails in an "external" mailbox, google for how to set up "smarthost"¹ in postfix and find out the name of the SMTP server your ISP offers you.

--
¹ probably the "relay" you refer to in your first post.