I've been really struggling trying to send emails.

Part of my problems is there are multiple tutorials which all differ a bit, and I inappropriately am trying to follow all of them.

Does anyone one have a suggestion for a single tutorial or whitepaper? I would like to have used http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/postfix, but it says it might not be appropriate for Centos6. I don't need anything very sophisticated, and would be ecstatic if I could even send an email from the command line.

Thank you

The CentOS 5 guide will probably work fine...but I'm confused as to why you just didn't TRY that guide? What would be the harm if it didn't work??? It doesn't work NOW, so it's not like following the CentOS 5 guide would break anything.

And your question leaves out a good bit, the environment being the biggest part. If you're in a corporate environment with firewalls and existing mail-relay servers, that's very different than setting it up at your home to use your ISP's mail server and doing other things with DNS. What kind of environment are you in, and what resources further upstream are you going to use?

Hi TB0ne,

I'm just worried that if I keep on changing things, I am going to have a mess. Maybe I shouldn't be worried.

The server is located in my garage. I have a home wireless router between my Comcast modem and the server (I don't think this matters, but I am using WiFi to network it since I couldn't get wire down there). It works perfect as a webserver (I don't use it for production). I have ports 25 and 110 open for both the hardware router and iptables. I don't know what you mean by "what resources further upstream are you going to used".

Thank you

Make backups before you edit!

I always identify mine by an ".org" extension meaning "original"
and ".last" is the "last" file state before my current edit.
Worst-case scenario, I go back to the "original" and "start over".

That being said, I've alway found server-world.info to be of help since it provides screenshots of the tasks they seek to help you on, such as
CentOS 6 - MAIL Server - Install/Configure Postfix

I'll butt out now.
Have a Great Day!

Not at all. All you're doing is editing config (text) files. Make a copy of the originals first, and edit away. What's the worst that can happen? The service won't work? ABSOLUTE worst case scenario: you have to reload your OS from scratch. And as long as you have backups, it's not a big deal.
"upstream" usually refers to the next hop in the chain. For example, in a corporate environment, you have your desktop computer going upstream to the email server, which goes upstream to the Internet. In your case, your upstream hop will be your ISP's mail server (if they allow you to relay, and you'll have to ask them), or you can set things up to use Google or Yahoo's mail servers. Either of those will need you to have a static IP address from your ISP first.

Since this is for your home, why are you trying to do this, if I may ask? Seems like a good bit of effort to duplicate what you already have with your ISP's mail offerings and/or Gmail.

Thanks Habitual,

Looks like a good article.

You have a great day as well!

That's if I use their mail servers, and don't create my own, right? I've sent mail from PHP before, and used by gmail account. If I do it with postfix, I don't have to rely up comcast or google, true?

Good question! It isn't my home email, but I need to set up gitlab to send out emails. Also, I wanted to be able to send email out from PHP without using my gmail account. But most of all, I suppose, I wanted to see how it is done.