Hello:

My goal is to run my own smtp server which sends mail to customers over the internet. Currently I have two Linux boxes. One is a proxy running squid. The second is an Apache web server.

I have read the Postfix documentation concerning running Postfix as an email/firewall gateway, but I'm a little confused.

Are they trying to say that I need to run a Postfix daemon on my proxy server as a gateway/forwarder and another Postfix daemon on the webserver (let's say) as the actual smtp server on my internal network?

The documentation wasn't clear on this point. Does anyone have any advise or examples as to how this is done?

CMD

For a mail server to work (with out trickery) it will require a Public IP address. I'm assuming it has one. What exactly do you mean by email/firewall gateway? Without hundreds of users and very crappy hardware I'm sure one instance of postfix will do the job. Tell us more about the lay out of your network and what you're trying to achive.

Seeya,
Finn.

Yes my ISP has issued me five static IPs and a Netopia 3500 DSL router. I have two Linux boxes, the first of which is a proxy server running squid. The second is and Apache webserver. So the network is relatively simple:

Internet<---->Proxy<---->Webserver

The documentation on the Postfix site specifies that the particular configuration that I have in mind is for an "Email Gateway behind a firewall/NAT".

To me it sounded similar to what I had to do when I set up my squid proxy. Namely, setup a proxy/gateway on the proxy server (for http in this case for squid) that forwards http requests to the actual squid server.

This led me to question whether the smtp server(s) needed to be set up in a similar fashion. You know, where a postfix instance is configured on the proxy server that forwards smtp to the internet and accepts outgoing smtp requests from a postfix instance "inside" my local net.

Although, its starting to sound more like I just need 1 postfix server configured as gateway to get the job done.

Here is what I've been reading from the postfix site:

[URL=http://www.postfix.org/STANDARD_CONFIGURATION_README.html#firewall]

Sorry, I ment to say, "the actual Apache server" at the end of paragraph 3.

You definitely need one postfix on the gateway to be able to interact with the outside world.
You can configure it to allow relaying messages from your internal network (mynetwork parameter in main.cf if I remember correctly).
The question is if you really need one postfix installed on the apache machine. If you can configure your applications on the machine to connect to your gateway to send e-mail, then you don't need a local mail-server on the apache machine.
If the application can just use local mail delivery commands (like /usr/bin/sendmail), then you need to set up postfix on the machine as well. You can set smarthost parameter in main.cf to IP address of your gateway.

Yes, I agree that one should suffice. However, the postfix documentation under the link I posted shows the local delivery agent disabled for the config they where suggesting. That lead me to believe that the "Email Gateway" configuration (as they call it) was only designed to relay to external (internet) clients for outgoing mail. That's were I got the idea that a second smtp server would be needed for the internal clients.

But hey, if I can get one to the job then fine. I just hoped to save some time and frustration before I get started.

Thanks
CMD