I have created a VMWare virtual Linux machine with Apache, MySQL and PHP. I can connect to these services from the host PC or other PCs on my network. I just use the name of the virtual machine as the starting address. For my next trick I wish to create a VM running an email server such as postfix. I have built the VM using Ubuntu 8.04.2 server with postfix installed. Now I am at the configuration point. Here is what I want to accomplish:

I have a D-Link router which can send its log files to an email account. This worked for a while using embarqmail.com until they changed something on their server (requiring authentication I think). I cannot make this work any longer. I wish to send email from the router 192.168.0.1 to my VM email server "vmMail804" at 192.168.0.104 (fixed IP). From the email server I will access the email with Firefox and run the logs through an analysis program which I already have in place.

I have found a number of web resources on configuring postfix. However, they all seem oriented to using a domain address for the email server. So my question is - can I configure postfix to work only on my private network (and if so how) or do I need to purchase a real domain name?

This is one of those things where the documentation generally advises "if you do not know, ask your network administrator". Unfortunately, that is me

Thanks for any advice and guidance.

Ken

many linus distros come with a lightweight mail program like sendmail. You really do not need a domain mailserver for this. A few tweaks to the default sendmail can provide you the mail program which can relay all mails to any mailbox that you may already have. However if you currently dont have a mailbox, then you can as well consider building a proper mailserver like Postfix/Qmail/Exim.
You may find this link helpful:
http://bowe.id.au/michael/isp/postfix-server.htm
Cheers

Thanks chitambira. However, my issue is not with sending the email, the router will do that. I need an SMTP service to which I can connect the router to do the process as I can no longer use smtp.embarqmai.com.

I will have a look at the documentation link which you provided.

Hi Ken,

You don't have to use a "real domain", but you may find it easier to adopt a fake one. For example, in many environments it is conventional to use a domain with .local as the "TLD", like linuxquestions.local. That will never be a public domain since there's no such thing as .local and it can be used consistently inside your network.

As for checking your mail from Firefox, I would think it's probably just easier to install dovecot since it requires almost no configuration just to get a basic POP/IMAP server.

- Arch