http://www.tehuber.com

If you are trying to get mail going on a Slicehost or similar self managed hosting solution ( I'm using Ubuntu ), this quickie guide may help.


If you're here I'd wager you've tried to do this on your own and resorted to Google for info. Good news! Getting this setup is very easy.

First, did you try sendmail and found it wasn't working as expected? If you've uninstalled it without stopping the service you'll need to kill the process. Find the pid with ps -elf | grep sendmail, then kill it.

Here's the quick way to get mail going:

# sudo aptitude install postfix
# sudo mkfifo /var/spool/postfix/public/pickup

Edit /etc/postfix/main.cf if you so desire.

# /etc/init.d/postfix start

Check for errors with:

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

 fatal: bind 0.0.0.0 port 25: Address already in use
 - Some other mail service is running ( is it sendmail? read above )

warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory
- You didn't run mkfifo /var/spool/postfix/public/pickup, read above.