postfix Cookbook

Installs and configures postfix for client or outbound relayhost, or to do SASL authentication.

On RHEL-family systems, sendmail will be replaced with postfix.

Requirements

Platforms

• Ubuntu 10.04+
• Debian 6.0+
• RHEL/CentOS/Scientific 5.7+, 6.2+
• Amazon Linux (as of AMIs created after 4/9/2012)

May work on other platforms with or without modification.

Attributes

See attributes/default.rb for default values.

Generic cookbook attributes

• node['postfix']['mail_type'] - Sets the kind of mail configuration. master will set up a server (relayhost).
• node['postfix']['relayhost_role'] - name of a role used for search in the client recipe.
• node['postfix']['multi_environment_relay'] - set to true if nodes should not constrain search for the relayhost in their own environment.
• node['postfix']['use_procmail'] - set to true if nodes should use procmail as the delivery agent.
• node['postfix']['aliases'] - hash of aliases to create with recipe[postfix::aliases], see below under Recipes for more information.
• node['postfix']['main_template_source'] - Cookbook source for main.cf template. Default 'postfix'
• node['postfix']['master_template_source'] - Cookbook source for master.cf template. Default 'postfix'

main.cf and sasl_passwd template attributes

The main.cf template has been simplified to include any attributes in the node['postfix']['main'] data structure. The following attributes are still included with this cookbook to maintain some semblance of backwards compatibility.

This change in namespace to node['postfix']['main'] should allow for greater flexibility, given the large number of configuration variables for the postfix daemon. All of these cookbook attributes correspond to the option of the same name in /etc/postfix/main.cf.

• node['postfix']['main']['biff'] - (yes/no); default no
• node['postfix']['main']['append_dot_mydomain'] - (yes/no); default no
• node['postfix']['main']['myhostname'] - defaults to fqdn from Ohai
• node['postfix']['main']['mydomain'] - defaults to domain from Ohai
• node['postfix']['main']['myorigin'] - defaults to $myhostname
• node['postfix']['main']['mynetworks'] - default is 127.0.0.0/8
• node['postfix']['main']['inet_interfaces'] - set to loopback-only, or all for server recipe
• node['postfix']['main']['alias_maps'] - set to hash:/etc/aliases
• node['postfix']['main']['mailbox_size_limit'] - set to 0 (disabled)
• node['postfix']['main']['mydestination'] - default fqdn, hostname, localhost.localdomain, localhost
• node['postfix']['main']['smtpd_use_tls'] - (yes/no); default yes. See conditional cert/key attributes.
  • node['postfix']['main']['smtpd_tls_cert_file'] - conditional attribute, set to full path of server's x509 certificate.
  • node['postfix']['main']['smtpd_tls_key_file'] - conditional attribute, set to full path of server's private key
  • node['postfix']['main']['smtpd_tls_CAfile'] - set to platform specific CA bundle
  • node['postfix']['main']['smtpd_tls_session_cache_database'] - set to btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache
• node['postfix']['main']['smtp_use_tls'] - (yes/no); default yes. See following conditional attributes.
  • node['postfix']['main']['smtp_tls_CAfile'] - set to platform specific CA bundle
  • node['postfix']['main']['smtp_tls_session_cache_database'] - set to btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache
• node['postfix']['main']['smtp_sasl_auth_enable'] - (yes/no); default no. If enabled, see following conditional attributes.
  • node['postfix']['main']['smtp_sasl_password_maps'] - Set to hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd template file
  • node['postfix']['main']['smtp_sasl_security_options'] - Set to noanonymous
  • node['postfix']['main']['relayhost'] - Set to empty string
  • node['postfix']['sasl']['smtp_sasl_user_name'] - SASL user to authenticate as. Default empty
  • node['postfix']['sasl']['smtp_sasl_passwd'] - SASL password to use. Default empty.

master.cf template attributes

• `node['postfix']['master']['submission'] - Whether to use submission (TCP 587) daemon. (true/false); default false

Recipes

default

Installs the postfix package and manages the service and the main configuration files (/etc/postfix/main.cf and /etc/postfix/master.cf). See Usage and Examples to see how to affect behavior of this recipe through configuration.

For a more dynamic approach to discovery for the relayhost, see the client and server recipes below.

client

Use this recipe to have nodes automatically search for the mail relay based which node has the node['postfix']['relayhost_role'] role. Sets the node['postfix']['relayhost'] attribute to the first result from the search.

Includes the default recipe to install, configure and start postfix.

Does not work with chef-solo.

sasl_auth

Sets up the system to authenticate with a remote mail relay using SASL authentication.

server

To use Chef Server search to automatically detect a node that is the relayhost, use this recipe in a role that will be relayhost. By default, the role should be "relayhost" but you can change the attribute node['postfix']['relayhost_role'] to modify this.

Note This recipe will set the node['postfix']['mail_type'] to "master" with an override attribute.

aliases

Manage /etc/aliases with this recipe. Currently only Ubuntu 10.04 platform has a template for the aliases file. Add your aliases template to the templates/default or to the appropriate platform+version directory per the File Specificity rules for templates. Then specify a hash of aliases for the node['postfix']['aliases'] attribute.

Arrays are supported as alias values, since postfix supports comma separated values per alias, simply specify your alias as an array to use this handy feature.

http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Templates#Templates-TemplateLocationSpecificity

Usage

On systems that should simply send mail directly to a relay, or out to the internet, use recipe[postfix] and modify the node['postfix']['relayhost'] attribute via a role.

On systems that should be the MX for a domain, set the attributes accordingly and make sure the node['postfix']['mail_type'] attribute is master. See Examples for information on how to use recipe[postfix::server] to do this automatically.

If you need to use SASL authentication to send mail through your ISP (such as on a home network), use postfix::sasl_auth and set the appropriate attributes.

For each of these implementations, see Examples for role usage.

Examples

The example roles below only have the relevant postfix usage. You may have other contents depending on what you're configuring on your systems.

The base role is applied to all nodes in the environment.

name "base"
run_list("recipe[postfix]")
override_attributes(
  "mail_type" => "client",
  "postfix" => {
    "main" => {
      "mydomain" => "example.com",
      "myorigin" => "example.com",
      "relayhost" => "[smtp.example.com]",
      "smtp_use_tls" => "no"
    }
  }
)

The relayhost role is applied to the nodes that are relayhosts. Often this is 2 systems using a CNAME of smtp.example.com.

name "relayhost"
run_list("recipe[postfix::server]")
override_attributes(
  "postfix" => {
    "mail_type" => "master",
    "main" => {
      "mynetworks" => [ "10.3.3.0/24", "127.0.0.0/8" ],
      "inet-interfaces" => "all",
      "mydomain" => "example.com",
      "myorigin" => "example.com"
  }
)

The sasl_relayhost role is applied to the nodes that are relayhosts and require authenticating with SASL. For example this might be on a household network with an ISP that otherwise blocks direct internet access to SMTP.

name "sasl_relayhost"
run_list("recipe[postfix], recipe[postfix::sasl_auth]")
override_attributes(
  "postfix" => {
    "mail_type" => "master",
    "main" => {
      "mynetworks" => "10.3.3.0/24",
      "mydomain" => "example.com",
      "myorigin" => "example.com",
      "relayhost" => "[smtp.comcast.net]:587",
      "smtp_sasl_auth_enable" => "yes"
    },
    "sasl" => {
      "smtp_sasl_passwd" => "your_password",
      "smtp_sasl_user_name" => "your_username"
    }
  }
)

For an example of using encrypted data bags to encrypt the SASL password, see the following blog post:

• http://jtimberman.github.com/blog/2011/08/06/encrypted-data-bag-for-postfix-sasl-authentication/

Examples using the client & server recipes

If you'd like to use the more dynamic search based approach for discovery, use the server and client recipes. First, create a relayhost role.

name "relayhost"
run_list("recipe[postfix::server]")
override_attributes(
  "postfix" => {
    "main" => {
      "mynetworks" => "10.3.3.0/24",
      "mydomain" => "example.com",
      "myorigin" => "example.com"
    }
  }
)

Then, add the postfix::client recipe to the run list of your base role or equivalent role for postfix clients.

name "base"
run_list("recipe[postfix::client]")
override_attributes(
  "postfix" => {
    "mail_type" => "client",
    "main" => {
      "mydomain" => "example.com",
      "myorigin" => "example.com"
    }
  }
)

If you wish to use a different role name for the relayhost, then also set the attribute in the base role. For example, postfix_master as the role name:

name "postfix_master"
description "a role for postfix master that isn't relayhost"
run_list("recipe[postfix::server]")
override_attributes(
  "postfix" => {
    "main" => {
      "mynetworks" => "10.3.3.0/24",
      "mydomain" => "example.com",
      "myorigin" => "example.com"
    }
  }
)

The base role would look something like this:

name "base"
run_list("recipe[postfix::client]")
override_attributes(
  "postfix" => {
    "relayhost_role" => "postfix_master",
    "mail_type" => "client",
    "main" => {
      "mydomain" => "example.com",
      "myorigin" => "example.com"
    }
  }
)

License & Authors

• Author:: Joshua Timberman joshua@opscode.com

Copyright:: 2009-2012, Opscode, Inc

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.