How to install Sendmail

Introduction

Sendmail is the most popular UNIX-based implementation of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) for transmitting e-mail.

Installation

This tutorial its for Debian 8 but should work for latest Debian and Ubuntu versions as well.

• sudo apt-get install sendmail
• sudo apt-get install mailutils



Configuration

STEP 1: Configure hosts file correctly:

• nano /etc/hosts

And make sure the line looks like this:

• 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost yourhostname

STEP 2: Edit etc/mail/local-host-names (create it if doesn't exist).

localhost

yourhostname.localhost

STEP 3: Reload /etc/hosts, so that the previous changes take effect:

• sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart (that works but seems to be deprecated, better use:)

(WARNING: The next command may make your server reboot)

• /etc/init.d/networking stop
• /etc/init.d/networking start

Or reboot from server panel

STEP 4: Run the sendmail config and answer (Y) to everything:

• sendmailconfig

(Now you can test if sendmail its working:)

• echo This is a test. | mail -s Testing [email protected]

STEP 5: Add this command in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc after line MAILER_DEFINITIONS:

define(`confDOMAIN_NAME', `your.domain')dnl