Prev Home 2 of 3 Next

Next, add new users to the system, since you don't want to use the root account for your daily work (yes, we're serious about that!). NetBSD offers the useradd(8) utility to create user accounts. Accounts that can su(1) to root are required to be in the "wheel" group. This can be done when the account is created by specifying a secondary group:

useradd -m -G wheel squirrel

passwd squirrel

Start the postfix server:

/etc/rc.d/postfix start

Now the SMTP server should respond to quires. You can check the status of the process by using the netstat command:

netstat -a

tcp 0 0 mail.smtp *.* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 mail.smtp *.* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 localhost.smtp *.* LISTEN

If the server does not respond to your configuration, most likely you have added addtional perameters to the configuration file. If this configuration is modified for any reason, postfix will fail.

Next install a POP deamon to check the virtual mailboxes:

pkg_add -R ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/current-packages/NetBSD-4.0/i386/All/dovecot-1.1.6.tgz

Find the correct dovecot configuration with the find command:

find / -name "dovecot.conf"

/usr/pkg/etc/dovecot.conf
/var/db/pkg.refcount/files/usr/pkg/etc/dovecot.conf

The default configuration file that postfix will use is located in the /usr/pkg/etc/ directory. The dovecot.conf configuration file determines what network interfaces to use. Here, we would like to use all the available interfaces such that users are able to retrive mail on the internal network as well as the external network:

vi /usr/pkg/etc/dovecot.conf

Press the ESC key

Type :ins

protocol pop3 {
listen = *:110
}

disable_plaintext_auth = no

Strike the ENTER key

Strike CTRL - C

Press the ESC key

Type :wq!

Start the POP deamon:

dovecot start

If you would like to add additional users, use the useradd utility:

useradd -m -G wheel mkearney

passwd mkearney

Then modify the /etc/postfix/virtual file and create the database once more:

postmap virtual

Make sure your DNS server is setup correctly to direct mail to your new server. Zoneedit.com makes this easy:

Now you can configure a client e-mail program to use the new mail server. Microsoft Outlook is a fairly good client and is easy to setup.

Click Tools, Options:

Click Mail Setup, Email Accounts

Click New

Click Next and enter the account information:

Click Next

Click Next

Click Finish, Close, OK

Prev Home 2 of 3 Next