# Mail-Server? How?



## AfterShock6783 (May 24, 2004)

Someone once told me how to do this a LONG time ago, but I have since lost the email...
I was wondering how to set up OSX  to accept it's own wail.  as in - Make it my own Email Server.  I currently run a webserver on it and i have a PHP script that allows a form that is filled out to be emailed to one of my addresses.  It has never worked and I am now told I need to run a mail-server or something to do it.
Besides that reason, I kinda thought it would be nice to run my own mail server and get mail through my computer account name.
If anyone knows anything about this, PLEASE help.
If it would help to see the PHP & HTML codes leave a reply and I'll follow up shortly.


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## btoth (May 27, 2004)

Well, I had my [Windows] server setup as a mail server, here's the basics:

I had a domain name registered.  I setup the hosts for the domain name to point to my server's IP address (NS1.* and NS2.* - both pointed to the same IP).  My server was setup as a DNS server and was named NS1.  In my DNS records, I added NS2, WWW, FTP, and MAIL all pointed to the same IP address. (If you're behind a firewall, you point them to your WAN IP, not your local IP and you setup the proper ports on your firewall.)  I then added an MX record in my DNS records that pointed to MAIL.*.  That way, any email address to name@domainname.com really got passed along to MAIL.domainame.com.

I had some mail server software then setup with a user account (essentially the email address).  Pretty easy, the tricky part was the DNS setup.

In OS X, I would guess that you'd be looking at Unix-based email server software such as sendmail, which I believe comes on OS X, or something like Posix... I don't know much about these programs or configuring then, but that should lead you in the right direction.


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## Pengu (May 27, 2004)

I think you mean postfix.


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## btoth (May 27, 2004)

Pengu said:
			
		

> I think you mean postfix.



Yeah, I probably do.  My mistake.


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## cfleck (May 27, 2004)

i am all but positive that os x has a mail server built in, but you have to get under the hood a bit to activate and configure it.  google around a bit.  i did it a year ago, but i can't remember how.


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## dlloyd (May 27, 2004)

Panther doesn't even need activating, at least mine didn't.


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## AfterShock6783 (May 27, 2004)

alright, so I did a bit of seraching, but it wasn't all as helpful as I was hoping.  someone on another board told me that PHP uses "sendmail" for what I'm trying to do (does anyone know a way to MAKE it use postfix?)
aparently Panther doesn't have sendmail built-in, but it does have Postfix IF I activate it (which isn't too hard...)
So it looks like my options are 
A) figure out how to get  a POP3 mail server running under Panther over here
or
B) figure out a PHP or some other (maybe CGI?) script that uses postfix or something else to send the email from the site (off my server in my house)

Anyone got any ideas from this point?


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## dlloyd (May 28, 2004)

I'm pretty sure Panther has sendmail built in, because that's what I'm using, and I didn't even have to activate it on Panther (did have to on Jaguar though).

You might try looking in the php.ini file if you want to change to postfix


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## Pengu (May 30, 2004)

I think you'll find, Jaguar and before, used Sendmail as the default MTA (mail transfer agent). From Panther, Apple is setting Postfix as the default MTA. However, I beleive that any calls PHP makes to sendmail will be transparently carried out by Postfix.


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## ksv (May 30, 2004)

Take a look at this one:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21479

As for sending email through a php script, you could use a remote smtp server to do that, but I'm sure a local one will be faster.


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## ian27 (Jun 7, 2004)

Try this link: here!! and scroll down to the sendmail section. I think it might help. 

Ian


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