Re: [gentoo-user] postfix - how to test

[Hans-Werner Hilse <hilse@web.de>]

Hi,

On Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:29:56 +0200 Johannes Skov Frandsen
<joe@omesc.com> wrote:

> Well I guess I should have expected it to rather simple to test. But I
> have never tried to configure a mailserver before
> hence my somewhat naive question.
> 
> So what I did was to change my smtp server in thunderbird to use
> localhost (with my postfix server running) and the send a
> mail. This failed! Thunderbirds just claims that it could not connect
> to the server...
> 
> I'm obvious doing something  really simple  completely wrong, but
> what?

Start with telnet or even better netcat ("nc") and try connecting
directly, e.g. "nc localhost smtp" (replace "nc" by "telnet" if you
have that installed -- you might need to install one of the utilities,
in that case, chose netcat).

The server should respond with 
"220 <server's host name> ESMTP <product id>".

If not, check
- whether "localhost" can be resolved (your /etc/hosts might be borked)
- if there's a overly jealous firewall active, that doesn't allow this
  traffic.

You can then try talking to your mail server directly (simple SMTP is
fast to learn), e.g. enter

---snip
MAIL FROM: blah@blubb.org
RCPT TO: myuser@mydomain.com
DATA
Subject: Test

this is a test.
.
QUIT
---snip
(server will send replies not printed here)

Do the same coming from the outside, in order to make sure that those
attempts are blocked. Otherwise you'll create an open relay and you'll
be blocked very soon on several other hosts.

If you're not sure what is wrong, that might warrant a look into
postfix' log files (below /var/log).

-hwh
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