Monday, November 17, 2008

Updated Email Setup on Amazon EC2

SMTP/Email Setup on Amazon EC2


Summary:
Create an Smtp server installation on Amazon EC2 that relays email to
your gmail email account. Gmail has a nice email client so this allows us to leverage gmail’s rich features. Our smtp software package is postfix.


Prerequisites:

Familiar with create and launching instances using Amazon EC2, and familiar with editing config files in linux.


Links to
documentation on Amazon EC2 and how to create and launch instances:

http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=84


1. Install Postfix


For Fedora 8: yum install
postfix



2. Setup/Install Certificate Authority for Self Signing



yum install openssl-perl



3. Create Server Certificate



cd /et/pki/tls/misc



./CA.pl -newca



4. Copy cert file to postfix folder



cp /etc/pki/CA/cacert.pem
/etc/postfix



5. Create Certificates (self signed certificates for testing
purposes)


openssl
genrsa -out enduro.key 1024

openssl
req -new -key enduro.key -out enduro.csr


openssl
req -new -x509 -key enduro.key
-out enduro.pem
-days 1095






  1. Authorize Port 587

    At desktop/client command line: ec2-authorize default –p 587

7. Update Postfix Config file, master.cf

This file is located in /etc/postfix/master.cf.
You need to specify port so that service runs on port 587


Sample entry:



#
==========================================================================
#
service type private unpriv chroot wakeup
maxproc command + args
#
(yes) (yes) (yes) (never) (100)
#
==========================================================================
127.0.0.1:587
inet n -
n -
- smtpd



  1. Edit 2nd
    Postfix config file, main.cf




This file is located in /etc/postfix/main.cf



I will not detail this entire config file because the configuration
details will depend on your environment. But, in a nutshell you want
to do the following: update the relevant hostname and ips in main.cf
and add something like this to end of main.cf:



## TLS
Settings
#auth
smtp_sasl_auth_enable=yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps
= hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

#tls
smtp_use_tls =
yes
smtp_sasl_security_options =
noanonymous
smtp_sasl_tls_security_options =
noanonymous
smtp_tls_note_starttls_offer = yes
tls_random_source
= dev:/dev/urandom
smtp_tls_scert_verifydepth =
5
smtp_tls_key_file=/etc/postfix/enduro.key
smtp_tls_cert_file=/etc/postfix/enduro.pem
smtpd_tls_ask_ccert
= yes
smtpd_tls_req_ccert =no
smtp_tls_enforce_peername = no

9. Also make sure you have this entry in main.cf




relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587

10. Using vi or your favorite editor, create the follwing file,
/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd




and using this format below for its content, add your email
address and password:


#
Contents of sasl_passwd
#
[smtp.gmail.com]:587
myemail@gmail.com:pa33w0r8



11. Now test
this file
by running this simple "hash" key test.


$
postmap -q [smtp.gmail.com]:587 sasl_passwd

myemail@gmail.com:pa33w0r8


12. You'll
need to protect your password so that only the postfix group and root
can read it by changing the access rights as follows:


$
chown root.postfix sasl_passwd*
$ chmod 0640 sasl_passwd*



( PostFix binary location: /usr/sbin/postfix )


13.Start
PostFix
,


command line:
postfix start


14. Use sendmail
from command line to test:


Cmd line:
sendmail mytargetemail@gmail.com this is test


Next: Hit Enter ,
then type a dot, then Hit Enter


(Note: make sure
Sendmail is started (cmd line: service sendmail restart)


(Note: logs errors
to /var/log/maillog)


Alternatively Test
Sendmail using this by creating a text file (mail.txt) in the below
format)


date:
todays-date
to: user@domain.com
subject:
subject
from: your-name@domain.com

Body of
message goes here





Then call sendmail with
that file as an input:


Command
line: /usr/sbin/sendmail email-address < mail.txt


Or you can use the -t
option to to tell sendmail to read the header of the message to
figure out who to send it to.


Command
line: /usr/sbin/sendmail -t < mail.txt


This will process the
To: and CC: lines for you and send the mail to the
correct addresses.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the instructions. Everything appears to have went well, but I keep getting the following response from google:


    Jan 8 14:36:44 domU-12-31-39-00-9C-51 postfix/smtp[12606]: C84591C559: SASL authentication failed; server smtp.gmail.com[74.125.45.111] said: 421 4.7.0 Temporary System Problem. Try again later (HS). 6sm22342421yxg.13


    Have you ever seen this? Are you still successfully using gmail's smtp server on ec2?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I haven't seen this error before, but from the message, you may want to double check that you have set your google email account and password correctly. It does mention temporary system problem,so maybe gmail is having an issue.

    ReplyDelete