Tag Archives: gmail

Postfix with gmail as relay on Debian Squeeze

My Situation

A server running Debian Squeeze.
A valid Gmail account.

Procedure

Make sure you have the right packages installed
# aptitude install postfix libsasl2 ca-certificates libsasl2-modules

Make a backup of your original files
# tar cfz /var/backups/etc-postfix_20121105.tgz /etc/postfix/

Modify /etc/postfix/main.cf
relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl/passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
smtp_use_tls = yes

Create /etc/postfix/sasl/passwd with your “user” and “password” values
[smtp.gmail.com]:587 theuser@gmail.com:thesecretpassword

Secure your new file and make it usable for Postfix
# chmod 400 /etc/postfix/sasl/passwd
# postmap /etc/postfix/sasl/passwd
# ls -l /etc/postfix/sasl/
total 12
-r-------- 1 root root 57 Nov 5 00:39 passwd
-rw------- 1 root root 12288 Nov 5 00:40 passwd.db

Make sure you have the right certification authorities available to Postfix
# cat /etc/ssl/certs/Thawte_Premium_Server_CA.pem >> /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
# cat /etc/ssl/certs/Equifax_Secure_Global_eBusiness_CA.pem >> /etc/postfix/cacert.pem

Restart Postfix
/etc/init.d/postfix restart

done