11.7 Configuring Postfix

The main configuration settings for Postfix are located in the /etc/postfix/main.cf. This file contains many configuration options many of which are beyond the scope of the introductory book. There are many resources on the internet that provide detailed information on Postfix so this section will focus on the basic options required to get email up and running. 

The key options in the main.cf file are:

myhostname = mta1.domain.com
mydomain = domain.com
myorigin = $myhostname
inet_interfaces = $myhostname

Other settings will have either been set up for you by the installation process or are not needed unless you are feeling adventurous and want to configure a more sophisticated email system.

The format of myhostname is host.domain.extension. For example if your Linux system is called MyLinuxHost and you internet domain is MyDomain.com you would set the myhostname option as: 

myhostname = mylinuxhost.mydomain.com

The mydomain setting is just the domain part of the above setting. For example:

mydomain = mydomain.com

The myorigin and inet_interfaces options use the settings we have just created so do not need to be changed (although the inet_interfaces may be commented out by default so you should remove the “#” at the beginning of this particular line in the main.cf file).