Apple has stopped using sendmail under Mac OS X 10.3, Panther. Instead, Apple has switched to Postfix. The default installation does not work out of the box. There are a few configuration steps required to activate Postfix.
Configuration
Edit /etc/postfix/aliases
First we want to define the standard mail aliases.
If you have run sendmail under Mac OS X 10.2.x or below, you will have the /etc/aliases file. Postfix keeps its version in /etc/postfix/aliases. It is best to transfer your settings manually, but you may cheat and copy it using the command line (/Applications/utilities/Terminal):
sudo cp /etc/aliases /etc/postfix
The shell will ask for your administrative password.
If you never had configured sendmail you will want to edit /etc/postfix/aliases. The best method is to use pico.
sudo pico /etc/postfix/aliases
Note: the file includes some basic instructions at the beginning and a full man(ual) page at the end.
Build aliases database
We now build the aliaases database:
sudo postalias /etc/postfix/aliases sudo newaliases
Edit /etc/postfix/main.cf
/etc/postfix/main.cf is the main configuration file for Postfix. We need to customize the generic default file to our specifications.
sudo pico /etc/postfix/main.cf
Change the following lines (substitute your own data for lines 75 and 253):
75: mydomain = host.domain.com 91: myorigin = $mydomain 105: inet_interfaces = all 152: mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain 239: mynetworks_style = subnet 253: mynetworks = 192.168.0.0/23, 127.0.0.0/8
Edit /etc/postfix/master.cf
We need to uncomment line 77.
sudo pico /etc/postfix/master.cf
Delete the leading # sign. i.e.:
#smtp inet n - n - - smtpd to smtp inet n - n - - smtpd
Setting the Permissions
For some reason the permissions of a number of files and directories are incorrectly set. We need to fix this. Note: You may have to restore these settings after repairing Disk permissions (see the article on repairing disk permssissions for more information).
sudo chown -R postfix /private/var/spool/postfix/* sudo chown root /private/var/spool/postfix sudo chgrp postdrop /private/var/spool/postfix/public sudo chgrp postdrop /private/var/spool/postfix/maildrop sudo chgrp postdrop /usr/sbin/postdrop sudo chgrp postdrop /usr/sbin/postqueue
Edit /etc/hostconfig
Start-up
Incoming Mail
Postfix accepts incoming mail and forwards outgoing mail. However, how can you retrieve your mail? This requires the imap and/or pop3 protocols. uw-imap from the University of Washington can provide this functionality.
Version 2.2.0 - 20070203
