Redhat/CentOS Mail Server Setup: Postfix, Dovecot, Virtual users, MySQL, SASL, Postfixadmin, TLS

Redhat/CentOS Mail Server Setup: Postfix, Dovecot, Virtual users, MySQL, SASL, Postfixadmin, TLS

This is a small guide, showing how to install postfix, dovecot and postfixadmin on a server running CentOS.

The components of an e-mail server are:
the delivery and reception service – Postfix, which handles mail delivery
the mail retrieval service, dovecot, which handles POP3 and/or IMAP mail retrieval
users database, storing usernames, passwords, mail location. In this guide, i’ll use a mysql database for this task
the SMTP authentication mechanism, to make possible e-mail delivery for roaming users.
the management interface: Postfixadmin. This is a very popular frontend used to manage users and passwods for e-mail systems, written for postfix in PHP. It is accessible through a web browser.
The TLS layer, used to encrypt communications between the SMTP/POP3 client and the server. It may be used for secure message delivery between servers, if both servers support TLS.
Installation on a CentOS server should be done in the following order:
– mysql database
– dovecot
– development tools (may be installed ino a development-only machine, the tools are required to rebuild the postfix package)
– postfix. The default postfix package do not support virtual delivery agent and mysql, so it must be recompiled
– postfixadmin

Steps to Mail Server Setup

1. MySQL Database installation
2. Dovecot installation and configuration
2.1. Dovecot SSL configuration
2.2 Dovecot configuration for multiple domains
3. Postfix installation and configuration
3.1. Postfix installation from centosplus repository
3.2. Postfix compiled with dovecot SASL and virtual users support
3.3. Postfix TLS configuration
3.4. Greylisting with postgrey
4. Postfixadmin installation