Linux Server Security, Second Edition

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Postfix

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If for whatever reason you can’t use a binary package, obtain Postfix’s source code at

http://www.postfix.org. If you wish to compile Postfix with TLS (SSL) support, you’ll

also need to obtain Lutz Jaenicke’s patch, which is available from his web site: http://

www.aet.tu-cottbus.de/personen/jaenicke/postfix_tls/. Note that Wietse Venema’s rea-

son for not building in TLS support himself is that, according to the Postfix home

page, he hasn’t yet “figured out a way to avoid adding tens of thousands of lines of

code to the SMTP client and server programs.” (In other words, this patch adds com-

plexity to a program whose main purpose in life is to be simple and, presumably,

more secure.)

Postfix for the Lazy: A Quick-Start Procedure

One of the best things about Postfix is that it can be set up quickly and easily with-

out sacrificing security. Therefore, before we go any further, let’s look at a minimal

Postfix quick-start procedure. For many users, these are the only steps necessary to

configure Postfix on an SMTP gateway:

1. Install Postfix from a binary package via your local package tool (rpm, dpkg, etc.)

or by compiling and installing from source (see “When and How to Compile

from Source”).

2. Open /etc/postfix/main.cf with the text editor of your choice, and set the parame- ...