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Configure Postfix To Deliver Mail From Desktop (root, user) To My Gmail Account

I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and I want to use the command line to send messages to my regular email account. There are administrative tasks that sends mail to root / administrator but to simplify my tasks I want these messages to be sent to my regular email account in Gmail.

I installed postfix first.

#apt install postfix mailutils

Then accepted some basic configurations that were prompted when installing postfix.
 
    General type of mail configuration?: Internet Site
    System mail name: a hostname that will be used in mail headers, a FQDN is preferred, desktop, home
    Root and postmaster mail recipient: root
    Other destinations to accept mail for: $myhostname, desktop, localhost.localdomain, localhost
    Force synchronous updates on mail queue?: No
    Local networks: 127.0.0.0/8 [::ffff:127.0.0.0]/104 [::1]/128 192.168.0.0/24
    Mailbox size limit: 0
    Local address extension character: +
    Internet protocols to use: all

If you need to return to these settings, type:

#dpkg-reconfigure postfix

You need to create a password file which Postfix will use to authenticate with Gmail. In Ubuntu such a file should be placed in /etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_passwd. So I used my favorite text editor and:

#nano /etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_passwd

I entered:

"[smtp.gmail.com]:587  emailaddr:app password"            - do this without the quotes, okay.

Save and close the file.

Protect this file.

#chmod 600 /etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_passwd

Make sure the following entries are present in /etc/postfix/main.cf so open the file and add or modify the file.

relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587
smtp_use_tls = yes
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_security_options =
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_passwd
smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

Use postmap to compile and hash the contents of /etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_passwd. So type:

#postmap /etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_passwd

Then restart postfix by typing:

#systemctl restart postfix.service

That's it. You can check your work by sending a test email.

$echo -e "Hello. This is a test message."|mail -s "Test Message" username@gmail.com





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