Paralyzed from the Apps down
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paradise
MemberHello guvnr -
I've spent the last few hours trying to grasp how you're making Google Apps work across all domains hosted on your VPS, but to no avail.
So you have freshdomain.com. You add a domain zone in Linode using your freshdomain.com, then you update your nameservers at insert-registrar-here.
You lose me at the postfix part (http://vpsbible.com/email/setup-postfix-email/)
.. at hostname, and then later on at postfix.
I don't get why you're able to run Google Apps without changing your MX entries -- not even if you're running Google Apps across multiple domains hosted on your VPS.
Mind giving a super-noob overview of how the bits and pieces in this particular tutorial work?
Posted 7 months ago # -
Joe Crocetta
Memberwhen you set up your google apps account the google apps instructions point you to changing MX records and a CNAME record.
The idea of google apps is to take the whole mail server functionality off of your server. All we are doing is pretty much directing/forwarding the mail to a real mail server.
Posted 7 months ago # -
paradise
MemberThanks Joe, though my questions are not only about Google Apps basic workings.
For instance, I'm still wondering why $yourwebsite (with the tld extension chopped off) works in postfix's main.cf. I'm not using Ubuntu as my distro, but I doubt that package differs widely from distro to distro, and nowhere in main.cf is yourwebsite set = to anything. It's not a variable at all. It doesn't make sense. Example - why does it make sense to say mydestination = $waywiderweb, instead of mydestination = $mydomain. mydomain is defined as a variable and afaik, waywiderweb is not. Unless Ubuntu's install script does something special.
Maybe someone can post a complete /etc/postfix/main.cf from Ubuntu?
And, I still don't understand how your mail gets forwarded to Google Apps without specifying any MX records. Is Postfix receiving mail then forwarding to Google Apps? If so, how?
Posted 6 months ago # -
Joe Crocetta
Memberparadise I believe that postfix is totally separate from Google Apps, I believe there is no interaction between them. But they are also on their own fully functional mail services.
I know that postfix can send mail, I use it to send my server logs to me every morning and I know 100% it has nothing to do with Google Apps.
Mail that comes in through the external ports seem to be processed by the domain server (the MX records and so forth) and internal mail is dealt with by postfix.
I guess you can look at it as 3 entities. Google Apps, postfix and the domain server as the interface (MX records and so forth). The interface controls which mail service to deal with depending on the circumstance.
Sorry I didn't answer your question technically since I haven't had postfix or Google Apps on my radar for some time since it's all working fine for me... But I hope what I've described as my understanding helps.
I'll post up my main.cf shortly.
Posted 6 months ago # -
paradise
MemberThanks for the pastebin, Joe. I've just now installed ubuntu in a virtualbox, and I was right - the Postfix install script is special. BUT - there's no "waywiderweb" variable set anywhere. It's a variable created out of the blue. How does it work? I've read a bit about Postfix and only the guv does anything like this.
Ben - I'm sorry - which tutorial of guv's mentions MX records? As far as I can see, not a one. But I could have drain bramage.
I can see the logic though. So what you're saying is you have to set MX records in your Linode manager to Google's standard aspx1.blahgoogle.com, aspx2.blahgoogle.com, etc? Then once any mail hits your server, it just goes to google? So is there any reason to have Postfix on your server if all you want to do is outsource everything to google?
Posted 6 months ago # -
Joe Crocetta
MemberI remember reading something to the likes of .. mail servers are big and slow and take up processing power so why not outsource the whole mail system to Google Apps. Not to mention configuration time and you having to understand it all. And those were the reasons for offloading it to Google Apps.
Somehow my postfix and my google apps are working fine .. I see postfix only dealing with internal mail ..Like I pointed out before, I send my vps's logwatch emails through postfix, Other than that I wouldn't know what postfix would do for me. Not to say that postfix is pointless ... We might be missing something as postfix might be the underlying structure for all mail services .. I am not 100% sure.
For example, I have websites that send mail... I am not 100% sure that these sites do not use an API to postfix to send mail.. actually I do remember configuring a wrapper function that forwards it straight to the SMTP server, so yes possibly legacy code might expect postfix and then you would have a dependency on it .. But if you use smart software you should be able to bypass postfix with wrappers connecting straight to an smtp server such as Google Apps. If that makes sense.
Posted 6 months ago # -
Stu Rader
MemberIn my humble estimation, postfix allows your domain to finalize the loop for spf and dkim authentication from IP's and certainly in Google apps you can specify those IP's where it is allowed to originate from, and of course the Google IP Range. I'm pretty darn sure this holds water and when looking at how Guv does the hosts/hostname stuff it all makes sense to me, although I've got a little more that the minimum in those files, it works in harmony. Of course this is particularly important to prevent mail domain hijacking and include the proper signature/header structure so we don't end up in as many yahoo, hotmail and others junk/spam folders, just because.
I do use certain plugins in cms sites to authenticate straight into my Gapps mail account so mail comes directly from the intended domain sender and not some server intermediary.
Whether you can prove with certainty, that all this works without postfix is an area I'm going to explore further when I can spend the time. In Google apps I've seen constant evolution over the last 3 years, from as little as 1 single MX record on a Dreamhost box, to 7 (typical in the last 18 months) and now it seems standard to have 5, which has been steady on all our additional new domains during the last 6 months. I have gone completely to Linode with 2 boxes, but use Cloudflare exclusively for our authoritative DNS, bypassing the need for any records maintained at the host, except for the single original tld entry at the host.
Would love to hear others thoughts about this as the topic evolves.
Just me.
StuPosted 6 months ago #
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