Thanks for spotting it though

I’ve updated the article to make this clearer.

Ben

Ben

I am very happy to finally get this to work. I always used postfix and cyrus. But cyrus can’t work with ssl I believe.

Next I would like to have is my webmail (squirrel) in HTTPS there is a howto in nslu2-linux.org but i never got this to work. (it has been a while since I tried it )

kind regards Raymond

To work around the problem:
Internet Mail Provider > Customize > Redirect tab > enter the address of your SMTP server in the “Ignored addresses” box > OK

Glad you’ve got it working, I’m afraid I haven’t had time to look into your problem – I don’t think I ever would have thought a virus scanner could be causing your trouble though!

If you don’t mind, I would like to credit you on this and the mail server articles for all your testing and feedback.

The tiramisu is very good – I doubled the quantities because I was cooking for 7, but I found that I only needed just over half the double-quantity of sponge fingers (maybe because I was making it in a larger but shallower dish).

in dovecot.conf it said
protocols = pop3
i changed it to
protocols = pop3 pop3s

did the trick

I still have to do some testing and fine tuning (my isp smtp server etcetera) but I think I have a working SSL TLS mail server now. Thank you very much. your howto’s and comments were very helpfull.

Next will be the Tiramisu

Many thanks mate,
Cheers Raymond

It was AVAST antivirus wich did’nt allow me to use TLS. I have to find a way (exept switching off my avast every time) in how to solve this the elegant way.

Now the only problem left is the pop3 problem. I am looking into that at the moment.

I get a lot of replies but nothing likeor with STARTTLS
Here is the reply

220 water.mentjens.nl ESMTP Postfix
EHLO test
250-HOSTNAME@DOMAINNAME.NL
250-PIPELINING
250-SIZE 10240000
250-VRFY
250-ETRN
250-AUTH PLAIN
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-8BITMIME
250 DSN

/opt/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf does not accept the “ssl_disable = no” parameter

I omitted “ssl_disable = no” and changed “ssl = no” into “ssl = yes” However I don’t know if I should.

Sending an email with thunderbird smtp settings to use tls, results in:
Sending of message failed.
An error occurred sending mail: Unable to connect to SMTP server192.168.1.100 via STARTTLS
since it doesn’t offer STARTTLS In EHLO response. Please verify that your Mail/News account settings are correct and try again.

when I tell my mailclient to NOT use TLS or SSL sending mail is not a problem.

Receiving an email with ssl configured in my mailclient results in my client telling me:
Could not connect to server 192.168.1.100; the connection was refused

when I tell thunderbird not to use TLS or SSL in POP3 traffic receiving mail is not a problem.

Conclusion the mailserver only works when TLS or SSL is not used.
Is there something I could check? Maybe something like the “ssl_disable = no” parameter

I feel like i’m verry close.

Kind regards
Raymond

It looks like it works now. However I cant login with telnet because i get the “Panic: POP3(you@yourdomain.com): Trying to allocate 0 bytes etcetera bug.

However thunderbird seems to cope with it.

this weekend I will try the patch and next week I hope to do the TLS/SSL howto

Thanx mate for your swift responses

Add (or edit) the following line in your dovecot.conf file:

protocols = pop3

That should be the last stage, and you should be able to telnet into your POP3 server now!

no joy

however just for fun I tried to login to the dovecot server with imap protocol and this works. I have no intention to use imap at this point. but the fact that i CAN login to dovecot with imap is very promising.

Any ideas why pop is not working? some config? or some port?

kind regards
Raymond

When I get this to work I will try to setup SSL/TLS. Your other howto.

greetz Raymond

I think I’ve spotted the problem – your passwd-mail file needs to have read permission for ‘group’ (g=r), but my instructions tell you to give it to ‘others’ (o=r) instead. Although o=r gives read permission to all other users, the u= and g= permissions take priority, and so all permissions are denied to the administrators group.

You should be able to fix it with:

chmod g=r,o= /etc/passwd-mail

I will change the instructions accordingly.

Still working on it. I get stuck at the following part:

after: /opt/etc/init.d/S90dovecot start

my /var/log/dovecot says:

dovecot: May 14 21:55:53 Info: Dovecot v1.2.beta1 starting up (core dumps disabled)
dovecot: May 14 21:55:53 Error: child 5831 (auth) returned error 89 (Fatal failure)
dovecot: May 14 21:55:53 Error: auth(default): passwd-file /etc/passwd-mail: Can’t open file: Permission denied
dovecot: May 14 21:55:53 Fatal: Auth process died too early – shutting down

I checked my permissions for the mentioned file they are:

-rw—-r– 1 root administ 35 May 14 21:52 passwd-mail

is it maybe because it writes administ in stead of administrator (as stated in the chown command) or maybe something with the uid or gid ( 8 and 12 )

Cheers Raymond

There were also a few missing bits of information, and a couple of typos that could mislead; these have been corrected, and I’ve tested the entire article successfully.

Oh, I have left the maildrop entry in /etc/group as maildrop:x:69: since that was how it was when I found it – although adding user maildrop as a member of the maildrop group won’t do any harm.

I would like to thank you for this howto. It is very comprehensive. I am not yet in the fase of testing so I dont know if it will work yet, but compared to most howto’s your explainaitions are very good.

Thanx again

Raymond

found two more typo’s

after: Now restart the server so our changes take effect.
you write:
opt/etc/init.d/S69postfix restart
should be
/opt/etc/init.d/S69postfix restart

And
vi /opt/etc/dovecot.conf
should be
vi /opt/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

I am replacing my postfix + cyrus configuration for a postfix + dovecot config.

Ill let you hear my progress

I’m afraid you’ve found a typo in the instructions – the command you need to run is actually:

postmap /opt/etc/postfix/virtual-maps

The postmap tool is part of the Postfix distribution, and turns the file you specify into a database file that Postfix can read – in this case, it turns virtual-maps into virtual-maps.db.

I reformatted this article a few months ago, and I think that’s when the typo appeared. Thanks for spotting it, and sorry for any confusion it caused!

Regards,

Nik.

I’m trying to install postfix + dovecot following your howto.

However I get stuck after the part: “We now turn /opt/etc/postfix/virtual-maps into a hash file,……. ”

What should I be doing there. I have no idea what “turning into a hashfile means” and I can’t seem to find any command.

Greetings Raymond