After setting up a BIND DNS on my Ubuntu 10.04 x32 server, I decided I should probably make a mail server too. I wanted to be able to access the mail from my iPhone.

Postfix was installed by default as I needed sendmail for some other php scripts I had previously written/edited. Otherwise you can always apt-get install postfix

I let webmin install dovecot for me. Dovecot is a POP3/IMAP server that will communicate with postfix’s mail system. Basically it’ll read the mail from /var/mail (which I had to edit – more on that later). I then set the DNS name for mail.mydomain.tld using BIND on webmin.

Use webmin and open up Servers > Dovecot
Click Networking and Protocols
I selected POP3
Click Save
Click on User and Login Options
SASL authentication realms: mail.yourdomain.tld
Authentication methods: plain text
Click save
Click on Mail Files
Select Inbox under /var/mail, folders in ~/mail
Click apply configuration

Then I made sure that port 110 was opened up on the firewall and away I went. I could now connect to the server via POP3 on the iPhone and retrieve my mail. However, I could not send mail. The fix for that (Found from Jimmy’s Weblog):
apt-get install postfix-tls sasl2-bin libsasl2 libsasl2-modules
nano /etc/default/saslauthd

START=yes
MECHANISMS=”pam”

nano /etc/postfix/sasl/smtpd.conf

pwcheck_method: saslauthd

nano /etc/postfix/main.cf

smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes
smtpd_recipient_restrictions =
permit_sasl_authenticated,
permit_mynetworks,
reject_unauth_destination

rm -r /var/run/saslauthd/
mkdir -p /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd
ln -s /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd /var/run
chgrp sasl /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd
adduser postfix sasl

/etc/init.d/postfix restart
/etc/init.d/saslauthd start

Honestly by that time I had changed a few other things in the postfix configuration, so hopefully this still works. If I ever set it up again or do a dry run on a secondary test system (ie if I find the time to QA my own work) then I will most definitely put up any updates. Any issues let me know.