Setting up for Postfix

Instructions for updating the Postfix configuration to use MailChannels Outbound Filtering are provided in this article. Authentication with MailChannels is required and is relatively simple to setup.

For more advanced configuration scenarios, refer to the online Postfix documentation.

Password Map

The first step in this process is to create the password map. Postfix uses this for authentication. The MailChannels team will provide the SMTP username. The password for authentication can be generated by logging into the MailChannels Customer Console.

Create a text file password in /etc/postfix folder using the following command:

# touch /etc/postfix/password

The format of the client password file is space delimited and will contain the following:

#smtp.isp.com       username:password
smtp.mailchannels.net    <SMTP username>:<password>

Save and close the file. Set the following permissions on the password file to allow proper access.

• # chown root:root /etc/postfix/password
• # chmod 0600 /etc/postfix/password
• # postmap hash:/etc/postfix/password
  

Postfix Smarthost Authentication

An authenticated sender header is required to track sender reputation within the MailChannels system. These headers are added when the parameters exist in the configuration file. The configuration directives are appended to /etc/postfix/main.cf.

• relayhost = smtp.mailchannels.net
• smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
• smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/password
• smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
• smtpd_sasl_authenticated_header = yes
• smtp_tls_security_level = encrypt

The parameters used in the configuration directives are described in the following table.

Parameter value	Description
relayhost = smtp.mailchannels.net	Relays all mail via smtp.mailchannels.net mail service.
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes	Indicates Cyrus-SASL support for authentication of mail servers.
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/password	Sets path to sasl_passwd.
smtp_sasl_security_options	When empty (default), allows Postfix to use anonymous and plain text authentication.
smtpd_sasl_authenticated_header = yes	Tells Postfix to log the authenticated user ID in the received header so that the user behavior and reputation are tracked.
smtp_tls_security_level: Encrypt	Optional. If there are issues connecting with this option, try disabling.

You will need to save and close the file. Restart Postfix using the following command:

# /etc/init.d/postfix restart

Testing

Test your setup by sending a text email containing the following content:

$ echo 'This is a test.' > /tmp/test

$ mail -s 'Test' [e-mail] < /tmp/test

# tail -f /var/log/mail.log

# rm /tmp/test

Helpful Hints

If you are getting no mechanism available error messages, you may be missing SASL authentication libraries.

If the operating system is Debian^® or Ubuntu^®, install the missing module dependency using apt-get:

#  apt-get install libsasl2-modules

If the operating system is RedHat^®, Fedora^®, or CentOS^®, obtain the following module using yum, the default package manager:

# yum install cyrus-sasl-plain