First of all you need to install and configure Postfix to Use Gmail SMTP on Ubuntu.
Install all necessary packages:
$ sudo apt-get install postfix mailutils libsasl2-2 ca-certificates libsasl2-modules
If you do not have postfix installed before, postfix configuration wizard will ask you some questions. Just select your server as Internet Site and for FQDN use something like mail.example.com
Then open your postfix config file:
$ sudo -H gedit /etc/postfix/main.cf
and add following lines to it:
relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
smtp_use_tls = yes
You might have noticed that we haven’t specified our Gmail username and password in above lines. They will go into a different file. Open/Create:
$ sudo -H gedit /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
And add following line:
[smtp.gmail.com]:587 [email protected]:PASSWORD
If you want to use your Google App’s domain, please replace @gmail.com with your @domain.com.
Fix permission and update postfix config to use sasl_passwd file:
$ sudo chmod 400 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
$ sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
Next, validate certificates to avoid running into error. Just run following command:
$ cat /etc/ssl/certs/Thawte_Premium_Server_CA.pem | sudo tee -a /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
Finally, reload postfix config for changes to take effect:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload
Testing
Check if mails are sent via Gmail SMTP server
If you have configured everything correctly, following command should generate a test mail from your server to your mailbox.
echo "Test mail from postfix" | mail -s "Test Postfix" [email protected]
To further verify, if mail sent from above command is actually sent via Gmail’s SMTP server, you can log into Gmail account [email protected] with PASSWORD and check "Sent Mail" folder in that Gmail account. By default, Gmail always keeps a copy of mail being sent through its web-interface as well as SMTP server. This logging is one strong reason that we often use Gmail when mail delivery is critical.
Troubleshooting
Error: "SASL authentication failed; server smtp.gmail.com"
You need to unlock the captcha by visiting this page
https://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha
You can run test again after unlocking captcha.
source
You need to use following syntax of
mail
and
mutt
to send emails, note that if you want to send attachment file via
mail
command it's not support or it's better I say I can not send my attached file via
mail
command, instead you can use
mutt
command line, it's very useful. and in
mutt
command you have to type attachment arguments after the email address. I test it and works fine.
you can install mutt
via this command:
$ sudo apt-get install mutt
Using mail
mail -s "TestSubject" [email protected] -a "UserReport.txt" < MessageBody.txt
Using mutt
mutt -s "TestSubject" [email protected] -a "UserReport.txt" < MessageBody.txt
While UserReport.txt
is your attachment file, MessageBody
is text/file of your body of email, TestSubject
is your email subject.
-s
flag is used for "Subject" and -a
flag is used for "Attachment file"
ls -l $(which sendmail)
tells you? Anddpkg -S $(which sendmail)
? what are you using to read and send email normally, and with which configuration? Please add this info to your question.cat