Comments on: Install Postfix mail server and Dovecot on Ubuntu or Debian

By: Silver Moon

Silver Moon — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 07:39:10 +0000

In reply to eric. glad to know that!

By: eric

eric — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 17:37:58 +0000

bravo !
you save me lot of hours, days, weeks.
Because my hostname was locahost it didn’t worked.
Since I understand to put mx name it is fine !!
thanks ! very good job

By: aram

aram — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 18:45:34 +0000

It is important to also add the following to main.cf for postfix:
mailbox_transport = lmtp:unix:private/dovecot-lmtp
otherwise if the e-mail name is the same as the user name on the server, emails will not get delivered to dovecot, but will instead just stay in the unix mbox file in /var/mail/.

By: Glen

Glen — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 17:10:58 +0000

This Tutorial, for the most part, was clear, straightforward and easy to follow. Thank you for sharing!

But, I have a problem…

When I launched my web mail client (rainloop), I got “an empty message list”. In fact, there were NO folders such as the conventional ones, e.g. Sent, Trash, Drafts, Archive etc. I know that there are hundred of emails on the system that were associated with the system users method BEFORE transitioning to Dovecot Virtual_Mailbox_Domains structure.

How do I get dovecot to establish these Mail folders?
Do I need to add or adjust the parameters to the Mail_Location field?
This aspect of the tutorial has been a little confusing for me.

Thanks, again

By: Olivia

Olivia — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 16:58:30 +0000

Thanks a lot for the tutorial! :D

By: Zimmber

Zimmber — Sun, 14 Jan 2018 09:53:36 +0000

It is a very good tutorial, I managed to get send mail work, but cannot get receiving mail work, which part could be wrong here? Thanks.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 09:48:01 +0000

This was the only article I managed to find that explained everything while configuring. I got everything working by fixing errors with the certificate and stuff after doing everything in that tutorial. Thank you!

By: laura

laura — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 16:44:53 +0000

how should I add the MX records?

By: laura

laura — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 16:19:09 +0000

Thank you for this tutorial. I followed the steps and I am able to send mail to my gmail account but when I try to send an email from my gmail account to the mail server, it fails with this error: user was not found as domain. I have also added the MX record to my DNS server. The errors that exist in my dovecot.log file is that passdb doesn’t support credential lookups and passwd(user1@domain): unknown user
I get this error when I try this command: doveadm user user1@domain. but when I try doveadm user user1 , I dont get any errors. However both commands show me the results that the user exists. Please help me, I have been working on this for days and I dont really know what the problem is. I am also new to dovecot and postfix. I greatly appreicate your help. If you need anything else from my files please let me know.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 16 May 2016 08:02:17 +0000

Thanks a lot for this guide.

Just want to add a note on the ssl config. If you dont have certificate and key pem files you can generate them by using
mkcert.sh located in /usr/share/dovecot.

By: Nico

Nico — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 13:33:00 +0000

The best tutorial on the net! It worked, thank you so much!!! :)))

By: ashar

ashar — Wed, 13 Jan 2016 13:53:00 +0000

Hi Silver Moon, I’ve tried a few other ways before coming across your method. Your method is the best I have encountered so far because of the minimal changes and actually covering real world scenario i.e. 1 server and multiple domain names.

The good news is that for the unix users (not on virtual host) the could receive email from external parties. However for the emails on vhosts, I still can’t read the emails with mal. mail (on command line) showed 0 messages. mail.log showed this
Jan 13 14:01:58 fr-str1 postfix/lmtp[17097]: 7CBBE1A0AD: to=, relay=none, delay=63405, delays=63405/0.01/0/0, dsn=4.4.1, status=deferred (connect to fr-str1.mydomain.net[private/dovecot-lmtp]: No such file or directory)

I have tried changing the the value in postfix main.cf for the virtual transport but that would result in postfix error. I believe this error I have made is on dovecot config. Would you happen to have some idea which file it is and how could I correct it?

Thank you very much

By: Basile Starynkevitch

Basile Starynkevitch — Wed, 30 Dec 2015 19:32:00 +0000

What about adding aliases (virtual ones)? See my question
http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/252389/50557

By: Matej Tree

Matej Tree — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 17:55:00 +0000

Hello,

I followed this https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-setup-postfix-on-ubuntu-14-04 tutorial before. Now I deleted from there my email and followed your tutorial and now I get this

550 5.1.1 : Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table

before the mail was working with mail cli app

By: qba

qba — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 11:47:00 +0000

I keep getting

User unknown in local recipient table
postfix doesnt see dovecot user, whats the problem?

By: Miroslav Kravec

Miroslav Kravec — Mon, 04 May 2015 06:11:00 +0000

Great tutorial! I’ve just done my first successful Dovecot configuration.

By: ITSpecialist

ITSpecialist — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 01:17:00 +0000

I have to be signed into my Ubuntu server in order for my email client to work? Is there a step that I missed or is everyone else signed into there server too?

By: Talisman

Talisman — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 18:58:00 +0000

The best tutorial, solved my problems, my pain killer indeed! Thanks!!!

By: helloworld

helloworld — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 14:54:00 +0000

Revelation, the best tutorial
needed only antysmpam

By: Silver Moon

Silver Moon — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 12:46:00 +0000

thanks for the link. it covers almost everything needed for a perfect mail server.