Postfix
As
of Mac OS X Panther, setting up a local mail server just got a lot
easier. Apple has given up on the aging and clunky
sendmail, and is
instead using Postfix, which is easy to configure. (However, Postfix
includes a sendmail-compatibility wrapper in
/usr/sbin/sendmail.) The following sections
describe how to configure Postfix in various scenarios.
Tip
After you make any changes
to Postfix’s configuration files, you should reload
its configuration by running the command sudo postfix
reload.
Configuring Postfix to Send Email
By default, Mac OS X runs a program
called
postfix-watch
, which corresponds to the
MAILSERVER=-AUTOMATIC- in
/etc/hostconfig
(a setting of -YES-
starts the postfix server). The
postfix-watch daemon monitors the outgoing mail
queue, and runs Postfix on the queue as needed.
If you want to use Postfix on a standalone server, you must configure
two settings in
/etc/postfix/main.cf
. The first is the
hostname
(myhostname
). This should be a real
hostname, something that can be found in a reverse
DNS lookup against your
IP address. The second is your
origin (myorigin
), which is the
domain name from which email appears to originate. This can be the
same as your hostname (this will probably be the case for small
sites). However, if it is not, be sure to specify the correct
hostname. For example, here are the settings for a computer named
ip192-168-0-1.ri.ri.cox.net with all email
originating from that machine appearing to come from username@cox.net:
myhostname ...
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