Once I got my ubuntu server up and running I want my server to send emails, and there are multiple ways to do it, but I want my emails to go directly into the inbox folder of the receiver not to the spam folder, and I want it done simply using a Gmail account.

Following this guide from the start will make you know how I’ve configured my ubuntu server to send emails from a Gmail account.

1. Remove Sendmail and Postfix:

To remove Postfix and Sendmail simply do the following commands:
sudo apt-get remove sendmail sendmail-bin postfix
sudo apt-get purge postfix exim4 sendmail sendmail-bin
sudo reboot

 

2. Relay Postfix mails via smtp.gmail.com:

Install all necessary packages:
sudo apt-get install postfix mailutils libsasl2-2 ca-certificates libsasl2-modules

Postfix configuration wizard will ask you some questions. Just select your server as “Internet Site” and for FQDN use something like localhost.local or mail.example.com.

 

3. Configure postfix:

Open your postfix config file:
nano /etc/postfix/main.cf

and change the following line:
relayhost =

to
relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587

Then add the following lines to the end of the file:
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

 

4. Add Gmail username and password:

The Gmail username and password will go into a different file.
Open / Create:
nano /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

And add following line:
[smtp.gmail.com]:587 USERNAME@gmail.com:PASSWORD
Where USERNAME@gmail.com is the required Gmail account, and PASSWORD is the Gmails account password
In case you have a Google Apps account, replace @gmail.com with @domain.com

 

5. Fix permission and update postfix config to use sasl_passwd file:

sudo chmod 400 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

 

6. 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

 

7. Reload postfix config for changes to take effect:

sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload

 

8. Testing 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" you@example.com

 

To further verify, if mail sent from above command is actually sent via Gmail’s SMTP server, you can log into Gmail account USERNAME@gmail.com 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 I often use Gmail when mail delivery is critical.

Tags: Configure Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Send Email From Gmail, Ubuntu Server to Send Email, Ubuntu Server to Send Emails From Gmail

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 7th, 2013 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Internet, Linux, PHP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.