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Mail - exim4

Exim4 is a Message Transfer Agent (MTA) developed at the University of Cambridge for use on Unix systems connected to the Internet. Exim can be installed in place of sendmail, although its configuration is quite different.

Installation

To install exim4, run the following command:

sudo apt install exim4

Configuration

To configure Exim4, run the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

This displays a user interface “wizard” for configuring the software. For example, in Exim4 the configuration files are split among multiple files; if you wish to have them in one file you can configure accordingly via this user interface.

All the configurable parameters from the user interface are stored in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf file, so to re-configure you can either re-run the wizard or manually edit this file using your favorite editor. Once you are finished, you can run the following command to generate the master configuration file:

sudo update-exim4.conf

The master configuration file is stored in /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated.

Warning

At any time, you should not manually edit the master configuration file, /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated, because it is updated automatically every time you run update-exim4.conf, so your changes will risk being accidentally lost during a future update.

The following command will start the Exim4 daemon:

sudo service exim4 start

SMTP Authentication

Exim4 can be configured to use SMTP-AUTH with TLS and SASL.

First, enter the following into a terminal prompt to create a certificate for use with TLS:

sudo /usr/share/doc/exim4-base/examples/exim-gencert

Configure Exim4 for TLS by editing /etc/exim4/conf.d/main/03_exim4-config_tlsoptions and adding the following:

MAIN_TLS_ENABLE = yes

Second, configure Exim4 to use the saslauthd for authentication by editing /etc/exim4/conf.d/auth/30_exim4-config_examples and uncomment the plain_saslauthd_server and login_saslauthd_server sections:

 plain_saslauthd_server:
   driver = plaintext
   public_name = PLAIN
   server_condition = ${if saslauthd{{$auth2}{$auth3}}{1}{0}}
   server_set_id = $auth2
   server_prompts = :
   .ifndef AUTH_SERVER_ALLOW_NOTLS_PASSWORDS
   server_advertise_condition = ${if eq{$tls_cipher}{}{}{*}}
   .endif
#
 login_saslauthd_server:
   driver = plaintext
   public_name = LOGIN
   server_prompts = "Username:: : Password::"
   # don't send system passwords over unencrypted connections
   server_condition = ${if saslauthd{{$auth1}{$auth2}}{1}{0}}
   server_set_id = $auth1
   .ifndef AUTH_SERVER_ALLOW_NOTLS_PASSWORDS
   server_advertise_condition = ${if eq{$tls_cipher}{}{}{*}}
   .endif

Additionally, to enable outside mail clients to connect to the new server, a new user needs to be added into exim by using the following commands.

sudo /usr/share/doc/exim4-base/examples/exim-adduser

Protect the new password files with the following commands:

sudo chown root:Debian-exim /etc/exim4/passwd
sudo chmod 640 /etc/exim4/passwd

Finally, update the Exim4 configuration and restart the service:

sudo update-exim4.conf
sudo systemctl restart exim4.service

Configuring SASL

To configure the saslauthd to provide authentication for Exim4, first install the sasl2-bin package by running this command at a terminal prompt:

sudo apt install sasl2-bin

To configure saslauthd, edit the /etc/default/saslauthd configuration file and set:

START=yes

Next, to make Exim4 use the saslauthd service, the Debian-exim user needs to be part of the sasl group:

sudo adduser Debian-exim sasl

Finally, start the saslauthd service:

sudo service saslauthd start

Exim4 is now configured with SMTP-AUTH using TLS and SASL authentication.

References

Last updated 3 months ago. Help improve this document in the forum.