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Arch Server Progress

Chitchat
  • So I was updating the server today and realized I didn’t have Reflector running on it. So I install that and set it up to run as a service. So my hope is that the mirrorlist will always stay updated so I won’t have the error pop up in case I were to miss a bunch of upgrades for some reason.

  • So my next project with the Arch Server is to get the email working properly on it. I actually do have it setup so I can set up the email account in an email client. The part I am having trouble with is setting up the email to be able to send from a WordPress site. I put in the information that I do for the email client and it just won’t send the email out. I also believe that it won’t send to a Gmail account so I think I have something not entered in correctly for the dmarc or the spf. So I need to figure that out, but once I do, I should have a fully functional email server that works for different applications.

  • So my next project with the Arch Server is to get the email working properly on it. I actually do have it setup so I can set up the email account in an email client. The part I am having trouble with is setting up the email to be able to send from a WordPress site. I put in the information that I do for the email client and it just won’t send the email out. I also believe that it won’t send to a Gmail account so I think I have something not entered in correctly for the dmarc or the spf. So I need to figure that out, but once I do, I should have a fully functional email server that works for different applications.

    @Madchatthew Are you using Postfix for this in terms of the back-end?

  • @Madchatthew Are you using Postfix for this in terms of the back-end?

    @phenomlab yes, postfix and dovecot.

  • So I am thinking maybe I need to do this with the config file and the functions file in the template to get the emailing from wordpress to work when submitting a form?

    I am currently using WP SMTP Mail plugin, which I would think would configure all of this for me when I put in the information.

    https://www.mailersend.com/blog/wordpress-send-email#:~:text=Send an email with the WordPress API and wp_mail() function&text=php files%2C you can call,entered into the wp-config.

    I also need to go back through this to make sure I set all this up correctly as well.

  • I was able to get the email server working appropriately this weekend. So now emails will be sent through to Gmail and such. I has to change the value of what was in my spf record, I added a dmarc and I already had a dkim entry in the DNS. I didn’t have to do anything to the dkim entry. I also had to point postfix to my SSL certificate of the server rather than the self signed one. Now I will be able to work on getting spam detection setup and virus scanning.

    I was pretty happy when everything started working. I was able to do all of these changes without having to reboot the server. That is very nice so there was no down time. Of course using Debian or Ubuntu there is virtualmin that would have done all the configuration for me, but it was actually pretty fun getting things up and running and seeing all the interactions that are required on the backend. It is crazy everything that takes place that you don’t even realize when using the front end like virtualmin.

  • I was able to get the email server working appropriately this weekend. So now emails will be sent through to Gmail and such. I has to change the value of what was in my spf record, I added a dmarc and I already had a dkim entry in the DNS. I didn’t have to do anything to the dkim entry. I also had to point postfix to my SSL certificate of the server rather than the self signed one. Now I will be able to work on getting spam detection setup and virus scanning.

    I was pretty happy when everything started working. I was able to do all of these changes without having to reboot the server. That is very nice so there was no down time. Of course using Debian or Ubuntu there is virtualmin that would have done all the configuration for me, but it was actually pretty fun getting things up and running and seeing all the interactions that are required on the backend. It is crazy everything that takes place that you don’t even realize when using the front end like virtualmin.

    @Madchatthew said in Arch Server Progress:

    Of course using Debian or Ubuntu there is virtualmin that would have done all the configuration for me, but it was actually pretty fun getting things up and running and seeing all the interactions that are required on the backend. It is crazy everything that takes place that you don’t even realize when using the front end like virtualmin.

    Never a more true statement made. Virtualmin, whilst very convenient and “easy” (to a degree) often masks the real effort needed to get something working, and understanding what is “under the hood” is always better. When it breaks, you know where to look to fix.

  • @Madchatthew said in Arch Server Progress:

    Of course using Debian or Ubuntu there is virtualmin that would have done all the configuration for me, but it was actually pretty fun getting things up and running and seeing all the interactions that are required on the backend. It is crazy everything that takes place that you don’t even realize when using the front end like virtualmin.

    Never a more true statement made. Virtualmin, whilst very convenient and “easy” (to a degree) often masks the real effort needed to get something working, and understanding what is “under the hood” is always better. When it breaks, you know where to look to fix.

    @phenomlab yes, and I never realized how in depth and how many processes it takes to manually do what Virtualmin does and I have a new found respect for everything that needs to happen for Virtualmin to make a virtual host and for everything to work.

  • @phenomlab yes, and I never realized how in depth and how many processes it takes to manually do what Virtualmin does and I have a new found respect for everything that needs to happen for Virtualmin to make a virtual host and for everything to work.

    @Madchatthew it really is a great product - you cannot argue that.

  • @Madchatthew it really is a great product - you cannot argue that.

    @phenomlab said in Arch Server Progress:

    @Madchatthew it really is a great product - you cannot argue that.

    100% agree!

  • So I have been battling the email server for a long time it feels like. I believe I have finally figured it out and what I needed to change to get it to work appropriately. I ended up having to change the server name and added mail.domain.com to it. I think I could have used anything, not just mail to get this to work. I could have used server1.domain.com or whatever word I wanted. This has to do with the reverse dns that you set in the settings for the server in the hosting companies dashboard. From my understanding, it seems to have something to do with how dmarc or dkim works. I can’t remember 100% off the top of my head right now. Then in the dns of the domain name, which is hosted on another site, i added mail.domain.com as an alias. All of those things point to the same IP, so I don’t think I would have had to add that with how things were set initially with domain.com.

    I hope that makes sense. I then had to go into the server and change some of the configuration files for postfix, postfixadmin and change the domain.com entries to mail.domain.com and restart those services. Then I deleted the domains and mailboxes I created for postfix and recreated them. Then all of a sudden all of my test emails were delivered to the email addresses I created and to my gmail account. Now I just have to test the other email account I made and I should be good to go.

    The awesome thing about changing the server name, is that I didn’t have to restart the server for it to take effect. You edit your /etc/hostname file and type the name you want your server to be. Then you type hostnamectl set-hostname <new_hostname> and then in the console you can type in hostnamectl and it will show the new hostname.

  • So I have been battling the email server for a long time it feels like. I believe I have finally figured it out and what I needed to change to get it to work appropriately. I ended up having to change the server name and added mail.domain.com to it. I think I could have used anything, not just mail to get this to work. I could have used server1.domain.com or whatever word I wanted. This has to do with the reverse dns that you set in the settings for the server in the hosting companies dashboard. From my understanding, it seems to have something to do with how dmarc or dkim works. I can’t remember 100% off the top of my head right now. Then in the dns of the domain name, which is hosted on another site, i added mail.domain.com as an alias. All of those things point to the same IP, so I don’t think I would have had to add that with how things were set initially with domain.com.

    I hope that makes sense. I then had to go into the server and change some of the configuration files for postfix, postfixadmin and change the domain.com entries to mail.domain.com and restart those services. Then I deleted the domains and mailboxes I created for postfix and recreated them. Then all of a sudden all of my test emails were delivered to the email addresses I created and to my gmail account. Now I just have to test the other email account I made and I should be good to go.

    The awesome thing about changing the server name, is that I didn’t have to restart the server for it to take effect. You edit your /etc/hostname file and type the name you want your server to be. Then you type hostnamectl set-hostname <new_hostname> and then in the console you can type in hostnamectl and it will show the new hostname.

    @Madchatthew Impressive stuff. Postfix can be quite the beast to tame, but it sounds like you’ve managed really well here.

  • @Madchatthew Impressive stuff. Postfix can be quite the beast to tame, but it sounds like you’ve managed really well here.

    @phenomlab Thank you! I appreciate that!! I have been struggling with it. Now I need to go through and do some research and tests to make sure that it is secure and that no one else can use it as a passthrough, or route through it to send their own emails. During the setup it touches on those things, but I am sure there is more things I should be doing.



26/29

17 Feb 2025, 16:26


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    I would like to add that if you type reflector --help in the console you can see the different options you can add to the configuration file. I changed the sort to rate, so the fastest mirrors get used first. I also changed my country to US, because that is where I live and everything else I left default. While doing some research, the Reflector service should fire up about once a week or at boot. It is hooked into pacman so it may refresh when you run the update command above. Location of the config file: /etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf
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    @Madchatthew hmm, yes, that might be problematic.
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