Installing an SMTP server on Linux (Ubuntu)

Installing an SMTP server on Linux (Ubuntu)

It's really simple to install an SMTP server for personal or business use on Linux (Ubuntu).

First off...open up your terminal.

Type the following command :

sudo apt-get install postfix

It might ask you for a password. If it does, simply enter your account login password.

Once all headers have been fetched and downloaded, it will ask you a few questions such as your computername (which you could make "localhost") etc...just some basic questions.

For further configuration settings, type the following into the terminal as a new command :

sudo dpkg-reconfigure postfix

And that's it...
You have your own personal SMTP server running on Linux (Ubuntu).

So you might be wondering how this could be of any use to you...or you might even be wondering how you should set up your email client to use your personal or network Linux computer to send mail via this local server.

Well...having your own SMTP server has many great advantages. It is much faster, much more reliable, and you can go back and check all log files if necessary. I primarily use this local SMTP server for the PHP mail() function which allows me to quickly and efficiently send emails via a PHP function.

If you are planning on using this with your email client such as Opera M2, Thunderbird, Outlook, whatever, simply set the SMTP host name to be "localhost" or whatever your computername is for the Linux box. It should be sending through port 25 with no secure authentication at all.

After installing this...I managed to send emails out to my Gmail and Yahoo accounts in litterally 3 seconds. No jokes. That's extremely quick.

Have fun...and feel free to post your comments here.