Postfix and hostname

Hi,

I've a domain foobar.com and I'm "out-sourcing" the email of this account to Google Apps for your Domain. Meaning that the MX records of foobar.com point to Google. user1@foobar.com, user2@foobar.com,… all login to google apps to view and manage their mail.

I've a linode with Ubuntu 8.04 and after install the hostname was "ubuntu" and the beginning of /etc/hosts file was:

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       ubuntu  ubuntu.linlan

Then I installed Postfix and in the Postfix configuration I set node-n.foobar.com as my destination (because I want my linde to be called node-n). I didn't changed hostname.

Then I tested the instalation with the command sendmail. It sent OK and I checked the header of the sent message:

Received: from ubuntu.linlan (xxxxxx.members.linode.com [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 6si13606729ywp.3.2008.05.05.10.07.59;
        Mon, 05 May 2008 10:08:11 -0700 (PDT)

I disliked the "Received: from ubuntu.linlan" because I want it to be node-n or node-n.foobar.com.

So I edited /etc/hostname changing it to node-n and /etc/host changing it to:

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       node-n  node-n

The problem is… the header keeps ubuntu.linlan as hostname/localdomain. Can I get ride of that?

Thanks for your help.

7 Replies

Postfix will need to be restarted after changing the host name for it to see the new name.

Mike

Ubuntu puts the hostname used by Postfix in /etc/mailname, IIRC.

You can see what postfix thinks it is with "postconf myhostname" and "postconf myorigin". (I don't have the standard Ubuntu postfix setup on even my Ubuntu machines so I can't remember which of those two points to the other.)

Hi Mike, thanks for your attention but it didn't work! :(

First I change my /etc/hosts to

127.0.0.1     localhost
127.0.0.1     node-n node-n.foobar.com

Then I issued:

sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload
sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

But no success! The Received: from ubuntu.linlan keeps appearing! I even tried to reboot my server… no luck.

Perhaps this is a setting from Linode and has nothing to do with my machine. :(

@mendel:

Ubuntu puts the hostname used by Postfix in /etc/mailname, IIRC.

You can see what postfix thinks it is with "postconf myhostname" and "postconf myorigin". (I don't have the standard Ubuntu postfix setup on even my Ubuntu machines so I can't remember which of those two points to the other.)

Yes Mendel… it worked!! Thanks!

I issued "postconf" myhostname and it returned "ubuntu.linlan"… so something was wrong.

Then I edited /etc/postfix/main.cf, the variable myhostname was there. I replaced "ubuntu.linlan" by "node-n.foobar.com", and I restarted postfix.

Now it works like a charm! :)

@mendel:

/etc/mailname :)

/etc/mailname was right. The problem was in /etc/postfix/main.cf because I installed Postfix prior to the hostname/hosts change and the variable is not redefined.

I love UNIX but sometimes… ggg! ;)

@ngm:

I love UNIX but sometimes… ggg! ;)

Well, this time you can blame Debian specifically. Postfix as distributed defaults to the machine's hostname for myhostname and myorigin.

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