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Installing an SMTP server on Linux (Ubuntu)

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Well well well...

It's really simple to install an SMTP server for personal or business use on Linux (Ubuntu).

First off...open up your terminal.

Type the following command :
sudo apt-get install postfix


It might ask you for a password. If it does, simply enter your account login password.

Once all headers have been fetched and downloaded, it will ask you a few questions such as your computername (which you could make "localhost") etc...just some basic questions.

For further configuration settings, type the following into the terminal as a new command :
sudo dpkg-reconfigure postfix


And that's it...
You have your own personal SMTP server running on Linux (Ubuntu).

So you might be wondering how this could be of any use to you...or you might even be wondering how you should set up your email client to use your personal or network Linux computer to send mail via this local server.

Well...having your own SMTP server has many great advantages. It is much faster, much more reliable, and you can go back and check all log files if necessary. I primarily use this local SMTP server for the PHP mail() function which allows me to quickly and efficiently send emails via a PHP function.

If you are planning on using this with your email client such as Opera M2, Thunderbird, Outlook, whatever, simply set the SMTP host name to be "localhost" or whatever your computername is for the Linux box. It should be sending through port 25 with no secure authentication at all.

After installing this...I managed to send emails out to my Gmail and Yahoo accounts in litterally 3 seconds. No jokes. That's extremely quick.

Have fun...and feel free to post your comments here.

AMD Athlon 64 x2 - My new processorChange root password and login as root - Linux Ubuntu Dapper 6.06

Comments

insidenothing 29. January 2007, 16:34

Perfect! Much thanks for this quick and easy.. I was about to build from source but thought I would google ubuntu and smtp... you saved me a hour on my PII =)

patrick

Contrid 29. January 2007, 17:51

Hi Patrick,

I'm glad to hear that you found this article useful.
I actually have a bunch of Linux tutorials from things I figured out myself. I'll post some more here...maybe someone will find it useful.

Best Regards,
Antonie

jasw 18. June 2007, 16:37

I have installed the mail server as per your guidelines but really don't know how to put it to use. Need step by step procedure to send mails through this

jasw

apolobeta 8. July 2009, 05:37

wow... thanks for sharing these tips! May be the solution for my business, a little office who needs send (sometimes) a big number of e-mails... The ISP and the web hosting service limit us very much at amount of mail sending by hour or day! and the price for a dedicated server is very expensive!! (very very much in Mexico).

I think that's a great solution to me and other people in similar situations.

Thanks a lot!

pelomher 20. July 2009, 15:41

Pues a mi no me funciona localhost.
A pesar de haber configurado postfix de acuerdo con las instrucciones de localhost, al enviar correos , utilizando mozilla thunderbird mediante localhost, thunderbird los da por enviados, pero nunca llegan a la direccion a la que se envian.

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