question about Postfix

[Duane Hill]

On Tue, 2 Oct 2007 at 16:23 -0700, jekillen at prodigy.net confabulated:

>
> On Oct 1, 2007, at 8:04 PM, Duane Hill wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 1 Oct 2007 at 19:50 -0700, jekillen at prodigy.net confabulated:
>> 
>>> Hello;
>>> I have a quick question about Postfix.
>>> When I install Free BSD and have it
>>> include Postfix  from packages, does
>>> the install process completely replace
>>> Sendmail with Postfix, or do I still have
>>> to replace Sendmail with Postfix separately?
>>> Thanks in advance
>>> Jeff K
>> 
>> If you install Postfix from the ports collection:
>>
>>   /usr/ports/mail/postfix
>> 
>> toward the end of the install process, it will ask you if you wish for the 
>> install to make changes in /etc/mail/mailer.conf. You tell it yes. If it 
>> did not ask, /etc/mail/mailer.conf should look like this:
>> 
>> sendmail        /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
>> send-mail       /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
>> mailq           /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
>> newaliases      /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
>> 
>> This is what so-to-speak "plugs" Postfix into the OS.
>> 
>> To totally disable SendMail from running at startup after a reboot, you 
>> have to make some additions to the /etc/rc.conf config file. Namely, you 
>> have to add:
>> 
>> sendmail_enable="NO"
>> sendmail_submit_enable="NO"
>> sendmail_outbound_enable="NO"
>> sendmail_msp_queue_enable="NO"
>> 
>> Also, there are some periodic things that are ran which are SendMail 
>> specific that need to be disabled. That is done within /etc/periodic.conf 
>> as such:
>> 
>> daily_clean_hoststat_enable="NO"
>> daily_status_mail_rejects_enable="NO"
>> daily_status_include_submit_mailq="NO"
>> daily_submit_queuerun="NO"
>> 
>> 
> O.K. This is something I have not been aware of. As far as MTA's on any 
> system I am somewhat of a newbe. I do get regular e-mails to the root 
> accounts of my
> various (four) systems when they are running constantly, (two are) and I have 
> been wondering how a switch over will effect that.
> I will need to do a system specific configuration of postfix and define 
> system specific aliases, prevent public use of the servers for open relaying 
> and such. So I
> expect for a first timer I have my work cut out for me.
> Thanks for the info, much appreciated.
> Jeff K
> (I'm not looking to spam anyone)

Postfix can use the existing /etc/aliases file.

As this is getting to be more off-topic from FreeBSD, I would suggest 
subscribing to the Postfix mailing list:

   http://www.postfix.org/lists.html

and poking around the archives.

Also, the documentation is very well put together:

   http://www.postfix.org/documentation.html

You may also want to consider grabbing a copy of  "The book of postfix":

   http://nostarch.com/frameset.php?startat=postfix_rev

It can be obtained either in paper or electronic format. I have the pdf 
sitting on my 'desktop' for a readily available reference. It has helped 
me out in answering a vast number of questions I had without the aide of 
the mailing list.

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