Frustration and confusion over setting up a Postfix mail server on my Ubuntu server.

[dag10]

To start off, It's worth mentioning that I'm still very confused about how the whole mail server thing works, and what software handles what job. From my understanding POP3 and IMAP are protocols to pull email from a mail server, and SMTP is used to push email to a server. There are many programs that I've seen involved with creating a mail server, but I'm trying to use just Postfix. Postfix can send and receive email right?

My server runs in my basement and runs Ubuntu Server 10.10. It uses Cherokee as its web server, and it runs several other servers as well (SSH, FTP, Git, etc). My goal is to set up a mail server so that websites I run such as a Redmine or a web forum can send emails to people (e.g. an activation email for a user registering on a forum).

Anyway, I set up postfix, and now my server can receive email. I've been able to send an email from my Gmail address to [email][e-mail][/email] (my server), and it works. However, if I try to send email from [email][e-mail][/email] to my Gmail, it never goes through. I don't care about receiving email, as my only goal is to be able to send it.

I can post any configuration files you want to see. Any help is appreciated, even if it's just flaming me for not understanding exactly what Postfix does. :downs:

[PvtCupcakes]

I'm not familiar with postfix, but I've used sendmail to send email which is included by default in most distros.

[bohb]

Sorry OP, but you're not going to be able to run an outgoing mail server unless you forward your mail server to another mail server (like your ISPs mail server) and have it sent from there.

There's a shady organization called [url]www.spamhaus.org[/url]. They maintain a list of known spammer IP ranges and email policies that ISPs can opt into (and most of the major ISPs in the world have) to prevent spam.

One of these policies is blocking all direct2mx mail (mail servers on dynamic IPs that send mail directly out onto the internet that use sendmail or any other email server.) So as soon as your mail hits a mail server from gmail, yahoo, MSN, etc. it will be deleted and never reach the destination.

Once you send mail out even once and it's seen by one of the participating mail servers of spamhaus, it will automatically be added to their block list for known direct2mx use. You can goto spamhaus.org and type in your IP address to look it up.

[dag10]

Hmm. My IP is only blacklisted by one service (PBL). It's blocked by range by Verizon: [url]http://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/query/PBL395821[/url]

The "reason" is that Verizon wants all IPs in that range to send mail through Verizon's servers. How can I do that? Can I do that yet still retain my server's hostname (i.e. [email][e-mail][/email])?

[bohb]

I think the only way to do that would be to buy email services from your domain name host. You could probably forge the headers to make it look like it came from there, but that would make spam filters go nuts.