newbie question

Okay,

First off I have always been a windows guy and I have to say that now that I
have had a taste of linux, it is much better. Here is my problem...
(Remember I am a windows guy so I am having a real hard time getting used to
the concepts of linux).

I walked into an enviornment where the company I worked for was using with
exchange with no virus nor spam protection. Obviously they ended up getting
slammed, blacklisted, infected with viruses, the whole bit... so they had
someone come in and put a SUSE Linux box in front of the exchange box. As
far as I can tell the box is running Postfix to handle the mail forwarding
and authorization and something called spam assasin...

First of all, it works great, eliminated all the problems. The problem is I
can't figure out how to make an email account for myself. I get an error
message "user not found in relay table" when I send a mail to myself.

From reading on the internet I understand the conscept and I think I have
everything I need to do from SUSE, but I think I am missing something in
postfix. I notice there are .db files but I can't get into them using the
emacs text editor (is that what it's called, i am writing this from the top
of my head). From what I read those .db files should be my answer and I am
guessing they are somehow compiled. So what do I need to do. My comfort
level with linux is very low so I don't want to screw anything up...

I am sure you guys have answered this question, or variations of it a
billion times, so thank you in advance from somebody who has been using
windows too long...

Jess wrote:

> I notice there are .db files but I can't get into them using the
> emacs text editor

There should be plain text files, using the same name (e.g. user.db and
user). The latter is "transformed" using
# postmap user

But I hope that you won't try this at your company's mailserver...

Greetings, Michael.

On 2005-07-05 12:18:17 -0400, "Jess" <jesseteasley@sbcglobal.net> said:

> Okay,
>
> First off I have always been a windows guy and I have to say that now that I
> have had a taste of linux, it is much better. Here is my problem...
> (Remember I am a windows guy so I am having a real hard time getting used to
> the concepts of linux).

First off, let me say I understand where you are. I made that
transition myself not too terribly long ago, and I'm still learning
every day.

> I walked into an enviornment where the company I worked for was using with
> exchange with no virus nor spam protection. Obviously they ended up getting
> slammed, blacklisted, infected with viruses, the whole bit... so they had
> someone come in and put a SUSE Linux box in front of the exchange box. As
> far as I can tell the box is running Postfix to handle the mail forwarding
> and authorization and something called spam assasin...

In all likelihood, the SuSE box is configured to use Postfix as a
relay, checking messages and then relaying them on to the internal
Exchange server. Of course, I'm only guessing based on your
description, so I could be wrong.

> First of all, it works great, eliminated all the problems. The problem is I
> can't figure out how to make an email account for myself. I get an error
> message "user not found in relay table" when I send a mail to myself.
>
> From reading on the internet I understand the conscept and I think I have
> everything I need to do from SUSE, but I think I am missing something in
> postfix. I notice there are .db files but I can't get into them using the
> emacs text editor (is that what it's called, i am writing this from the top
> of my head). From what I read those .db files should be my answer and I am
> guessing they are somehow compiled. So what do I need to do. My comfort
> level with linux is very low so I don't want to screw anything up...
>
> I am sure you guys have answered this question, or variations of it a
> billion times, so thank you in advance from somebody who has been using
> windows too long...

In all likelihood, there is a file in the /etc/postfix directory (or in
whatever directory Postfix was installed) that contains a list of valid
e-mail addresses. You'll need to edit that file so that your new
e-mail address is listed in that file; then, as the other poster in
this thread mentioned, use the "postmap" command to transform that file
into a .db file that Postfix can use efficiently.

If you'd like to post your main.cf configuration file
(changing/randomizing IP addresses, hostnames, and domain names to
protect the innocent), we can identify the specific file that is being
used to store the list of valid e-mail addresses.

HTH.

--
Scott Lowe