Gmail Postfix MacOS

postfix_mail_macosx.md

Setting up postfix with Gmail on MacOS

• 14.1.1 Sonoma

1. Create an App Passowrd with Gmail

• Turn on 2 factor auth
• Generate an App Password

2. Create a sasl_passwd file

sudo vim /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

• Add this to the file

smtp.gmail.com:587 [email protected]:APP_PASSWORD

Replace EMAIL with your gmail username and replace APP_PASSWORD with the App password you generated in step 1

• Create a lookup table

sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

2. Edit the main.cf file

• Open postfix's main.cf

sudo vim /etc/postfix/main.cf
``

+ Add these fields at the end of the file 

```bash
#Gmail SMTP
relayhost=smtp.gmail.com:587
# Enable SASL authentication in the Postfix SMTP client.
smtp_sasl_auth_enable=yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps=hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options=noanonymous
smtp_sasl_mechanism_filter=plain
# Enable Transport Layer Security (TLS), i.e. SSL.
smtp_use_tls=yes
smtp_tls_security_level=encrypt
tls_random_source=dev:/dev/urandom

3. Send mail

Postfix should start automatically when sending mail

Test by sending a mail

echo "Postfix setting test" | mail -s "Hello Postfix" "[email protected]"

Replace [email protected] with the email id of recipent.

Some useful commands

• mailq : Check mails in the queue and errors if mail not sent.
• sudo postfix flush: Flush the queue.
• sudo postsuper -d ALL Delete mails in the queue.
• sudo rm /var/mail/$USER Remove all mails from local host.
• sudo postfix start Start postfix mail system.
• sudo postfix stop Stop postfix mail system.
• sudo postfix reload Reload postfix mail system.

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References:

1. How to send emails from localhost.
2. Postfix auto start on Sierra for smtp relay.