Provided by: courier-mta_1.0.16-3build3_amd64 
NAME
courier - The Courier mail server
SYNOPSIS
courier {start | stop | restart | flush | flush qid | clear user@domain | clear all |
show all }
DESCRIPTION
The Courier mail server is a modular multi-protocol E-mail transport agent. The courier
command is an administrative command, and most of its options are only available to the
superuser.
"courier start" starts the server by running /usr/lib/courier/courierctl.start in the
background. "courier stop" immediately stops all the Courier mail server processes and
aborts all current mail deliveries. "courier restart" restarts the Courier mail server
server. A restart is often needed for certain configuration changes to take effect.
"courier restart" waits for all current deliveries to complete before restarting. This is
the "nice" way to restart the mail server. "courier flush" takes all undelivered messages
in the queue and attempts to deliver them immediately, instead of waiting until their next
scheduled attempted delivery time. "courier flush" can be optionally followed by a message
queue ID in order to schedule an immediate delivery attempt for only a single message.
Message queue IDs are displayed by the mailq(1)[1] command.
Please note that courier start runs the main Courier mail server scheduling engine only.
It does not start any other daemons that you may have, such as the ESMTP or the IMAP
daemon.
"courier show all" lists all E-mail addresses currently blacklisted for backscatter.
"courier clear user@domain" manually clears <user@domain> from the backscatter blacklist.
"courier clear all" removes all addresses from the backscatter blacklist. When the Courier
mail server encounters a delivery failure to an E-mail address the Courier mail server may
stop accepting any more messages to the same address in order to minimize generation of
so-called "backscatter bounces". This does not occur in all cases, see "Backscatter
suppression" in the Courier mail server's installation instructions for more information.
The Courier mail server will resume accepting messages to the blacklisted address if the
delivery attempt originally encountered a temporary failure, and a subsequent retry
succesfully delivered the message, or if more than two hours elapsed since the delivery
failure. Use the "clear" command to manually clear the E-mail address from the backscatter
blacklist. This may be useful if the undeliverable message is manually removed from the
Courier mail server's mail queue, using the "cancel" command. Even if the message is
cancelled, the Courier mail server will continue to refuse accepting mail for this address
for up to two hours. The "clear" command can be use to reenable mail acceptance before
then.
CONFIGURATION FILES
The Courier mail server uses several configuration files which are located in
/etc/courier. These configuration files are plain text files that can be modified with any
text editor. In certain instances a subdirectory is used, and all plain text files in the
subdirectory are concatenated and are considered to be a single, consolidated,
configuration file. Unless otherwise specified, you must run courier restart for any
changes to these files to take effect.
International domain names should be listed in UTF-8 lowercase. For example, the
hosteddomains file may list “пример.испытание” as a domain.
aliasfilteracct
This file contains one line, containing the home directory of the account that's used
for filtering mail addressed to local alias lists.
When mail filtering is enabled, local recipients have the ability to define mail
filters which can selectively reject unwanted mail. /etc/courier/aliases may define
local mail aliases that contain one or more recipients. If it is desired to use local
mail filtering for mail addressed to an alias address, designate a local account that
will be used to specify filtering instructions, and put its home directory into this
control file. The filtering argument will be "alias-address" where address is the name
of the alias. See localmailfilter(7)[2] for more information.
Due to technical limitations, content filtering is not available for
multiple-recipient aliases.
Changes to this file take effect immediately.
autoresponsesquota
This file sets the systemwide quota on autoreplies, if autoreplies and mail filtering
are enabled. Note that this can only really be effective if there is no login access
to the mail account, since this autoreply quota can be trivially overriden.
The autoresponsesquota file contains one line: "Cnnn" or "Snnn" (or both strings, on
the same line). Cnnn: allow up to #nnn autoreplies to be created. Snnn: allow up to
#nnn bytes as the total size of all autoreplies, combined. If both Cnnn and Snnn are
specified, both quotas apply. If this file does not exist, there is no limit on
autoreplies. This quota setting applies systemwide. To override the quota setting for
a particular Maildir, create the autoresponsesquota file in that Maildir (which takes
precedence).
backuprelay
This file contains one line, containing a name of a machine where mail will be
rerouted if it cannot be immediately delivered. Spaces are not allowed in this file.
Mail gets rerouted if it cannot be delivered after the time interval specified by the
warntime configuration file. When backuprelay is provided a delayed delivery status
notification will NOT be generated. The message will be rerouted even if the
recipient's delivery status notification setting does not include a delayed
notification request.
This feature is intended for use by relays that handle large quantities of mail, where
you don't want to accumulate a large mail queue for unreachable mail servers. Please
note that ALL undeliverable mail will be rerouted in this fashion. Even if the
recipient of a message is a local recipient - and the recipient's mail filter is
rejecting the message with a temporary error code - the message will still be rerouted
if it's undeliverable after the specified amount of time.
Although currently SMTP is the only meaningful application for this feature, the
Courier mail server is a protocol-independent mail server, and the backup relay
function can be extended to other protocols, as they become available.
Multiple backup relays can be used by simply assigning multiple IP addresses to the
same machine name. Note that the Courier mail server checks for both MX and A records
for the machine specified in this configuration file.
It's important to note that when this setting is specified, warning messages get
turned off for all messages, including messages addressed to local recipients. If a
temporary delivery error prevents a message from being delivered to a local mailbox,
it remains in the queue until the temporary error condition gets cleared. Normally, if
the message remains in the queue beyond the warning interval, the warning message gets
generated. When this setting is specified, the warning message gets replaced with a
forward to the backup relay, but this occurs only for messages that are delivered via
SMTP.
batchsize
This file contains one line, containing a single number. This number specifies the
absolute maximum number of recipients for a single message. If the Courier mail server
receives a message with more recipients, the message is duplicated as often as
necessary until each copy of the message has no more than batchsize recipients. If
batchsize is missing, it defaults to 100 recipients per message.
bofh
This configuration file configures domain-based junk mail filters. Lines in this
configuration files that begin with the # character are considered comments, and are
ignored. The remaining lines contain the following directives, in any order:
badfrom user@domain
Reject all mail with the return address of <user@domain>.
badfrom @domain
Reject all mail with the return address of <anything@domain>.
badfrom @.domain
Reject all mail with the return address of <anything@anything.domain>.
badfrom user@.domain
Reject all mail with the return address of <user@anything.domain>.
badmx N
Reject all mail with a return address in any mail domain whose listed mail servers
include server "N". "N" is an IP address. The BOFHCHECKDNS option in the esmtp
configuration file must also be enabled (this is the default setting) in order for
this additional checking to take place. Note that this is "best effort" check. A
DNS failure to look up A records for hostnames returned in the MX record may hide
the blacklisted server from view.
freemail domain [domain2] [domain3]...
Reject all mail with a return address <anything@domain> unless the mail is
received from a mail relay whose hostname is in the same domain. "domain2" and
"domain3" are optional, and specifies other domains that the mail relay's hostname
may belong to. For example: "freemail example.com domain.com" specifies that mail
with a return address @example.com will be accepted only from a mail relay with a
hostname in the example.com or domain.com domain. Note that this setting requires
that DNS lookup be enabled for incoming ESMTP connections (which is the default
setting).
spamtrap user@domain
Reject all mail that has <user@domain> listed as one of its recipients.
Note
For local mailboxes, 'domain' must be set to the contents of the me
configuration file, or the server's hostname. Also, this check is made after
any alias processing takes place. Suggested usage: create a single local
spamtrap account, then create aliases in the alias file that point to the
spamtrap account.
maxrcpts N [hard]
Accept the first N recipient addresses per message, maximum. The remaining
recipients are rejected. An optional verbatim token "hard" specifies that the
remaining recipients will immediately be returned as undeliverable (otherwise the
remaining recipients are rejected as "temporary unavailable", and may be accepted
on a later delivery attempt). If not specified, the first 100 recipients are
accepted.
opt BOFHCHECKHELO=1
Verify the hostname provided in the ESMTP HELO/EHLO statement. “opt
BOFHCHECKHELO=1” is a global default, which may be overridden by setting the
BOFHCHECKHELO environment variable in the SMTP access file. See
makesmtpaccess(8)[3] for more information. “opt BOFHCHECKHELO=1” enables ESMTP
HELO/EHLO checking by default, and ESMTP HELO/EHLO checking may be turned off for
individual IP address ranges by setting BOFHCHECKHELO to 0 using
makesmtpaccess(8)[3]. Alternatively, HELO/EHLO checking may be turned off by
default, and enabled for specific IP address ranges by using makesmtpaccess(8)[3]
to set BOFHCHECKHELO to 1. See makesmtpaccess(8)[3] for more information.
opt BOFHCHECKHELO=2
Setting to BOFHCHECKHELO 2 has the effect of returning a temporary SMTP error
code, instead of a permanent SMTP error code, for a failed HELO/EHLO SPF check.
opt BOFHHEADERLIMIT=n
Reject messages whose headers exceed n bytes in size (minimum 1,000 bytes, default
100,000 bytes).
opt BOFHNOBASE64TEXT=1
Reject messages with base64-encoded text/plain or text/html content.
opt BOFHSPFHELO=keywords
Use Sender Policy Framework to verify the HELO or EHLO domain sent by the
connecting SMTP client. See Sender Policy Framework Keywords below for a list of
possible keywords.
SPF checking is not used for HELO or EHLO commands that specify an IP address
instead of a domain name.
Note
This setting may be used in combination with opt BOFHCHECKHELO=1. The
BOFHCHECKHELO=1 check is disabled if SPF verification of the HELO/EHLO results
in the SPF status of “pass”. This makes sense: if the HELO/EHLO domains
complies with the domain's SPF, it is not necessary to check it further.
opt BOFHSPFMAILFROM=keywords
Use Sender Policy Framework to verify the return address in the MAIL FROM command
sent by the connecting SMTP client. See Sender Policy Framework Keywords below for
a list of possible keywords.
Note
No SPF checking is done for if the MAIL FROM command specifies an empty return
address (a bounce). There's nothing to check.
opt BOFHSPFFROM=keywords
Use Sender Policy Framework to verify the return address in the From: header. See
Sender Policy Framework Keywords below for important information, and a list of
possible keywords.
opt BOFHSPFHARDERROR=keywords
This setting lists the unacceptable SPF results that should result in a permanent
error. All other unacceptable SPF results are kicked back with a temporary error
indication, inviting the sender to try again later.
The default setting for BOFHSPFHARDERROR is fail,softfail.
opt BOFHSPFTRUSTME=1
Disable all SPF checks for any connecting client that has relaying privileges
(RELAYCLIENT is explicitly set, or inherited after a successful SMTP
authentication).
opt BOFHSPFNOVERBOSE=1
This setting disables custom SPF rejection messages. Any SPF rejection message
specified by the SPF policy is replaced by a stock, bland message. The author of
this SPF implementation believes that there's a minor security issue with letting
an external site control the error messages issued by your mail server. The same
author does not believe that this is such a big deal, but security-sensitive minds
may choose to enable this setting, and sleep easy at night.
opt BOFHSUPPRESSBACKSCATTER=list
This is one of the two settings that controls which messages are subject to
backscatter suppression. The other setting, ESMTP_BLOCKBACKSCATTER is set in the
courierd configuration file, which contains further documentation.
“list” is a comma-separated list of message sources. The possible message sources
are:
authsmtp
Messages received via SMTP from clients with relaying privileges
(authenticated SMTP, or IP addresses that always have relaying privileges.
smtp
All other messages received via SMTP.
none
Do not suppress backscatter messages from any source.
The default setting is “opt BOFHSUPPRESSBACKSCATTER=smtp”. The other possible
values are “opt BOFHSUPPRESSBACKSCATTER=smtp,authsmtp” (which suppresses
backscatter from all SMTP mail), and “opt BOFHSUPPRESSBACKSCATTER=none”.
calendarmode
This configuration file enables basic calendaring features in the webmail server.
Calendaring is currently considered experimental in nature, and the current
implementation provides basic calendaring services. If this file does not exist,
calendaring options are disabled. If this file exists it should contain a single word:
"local". For example:
echo "local" >/etc/courier/calendarmode
This configuration file must be globally readable, so make sure that your umask is not
set too tight.
courierd
This configuration file specifies several parameters relating to general the Courier
mail server configuration. A default configuration file will be installed, and you
should consult its contents for additional information.
defaultdomain
This file contains one line whose contents is a valid mail domain. Most header
rewriting functions will append @defaultdomain to all E-mail addresses that do not
specify a domain. If defaultdomain is missing, the Courier mail server uses the
contents of the me control file.
When the ESMTP server receives a “RCPT TO” command containing the address
<user@[ip.address]>, and the IP address is the same as the IP address of the socket
it's listening on, the ESMTP server replaces the IP address with the contents of the
defaultdomain control file. If defaultdomain is missing, the Courier mail server uses
the contents of the me control file.
The contents of defaultdomain are also appended to return addresses to mail sent from
the Courier mail server's webmail server, if they don't already have a domain. If
defaultdomain does not exist, the Courier mail server's webmail server obtain the
machine hostname, and uses that.
Note
The mail domain in defaultdomain should be one of the local domains, as defined by
the locals and the hosteddomains control files.
Otherwise, if a domain-less address in mail headers gets augmented with
defaultdomain and the recipient replies to the message, upon receipt Courier won't
recognize the recipient address as a local mailbox. This might not necessarily be
wrong, but the consequences of such an action must be clearly understood.
Warning
If you change the contents of this configuration file, it may be necessary to
rerun the makealiases command again, else your mail will promptly begin to bounce.
If you don't have this configuration file defined, and you change the system's
network host name, you may also need to run makealiases.
dotextension
This file contains one line whose contents specify the name of dot-files in users'
home directories which contain delivery instructions. If this file does not exist, the
Courier mail server reads $HOME/.courier, $HOME/.courier-foo, $HOME/.courier-default,
and so on. If this file contains the text "qmail", the Courier mail server will
instead read $HOME/.qmail, $HOME/.qmail-foo, $HOME/.qmail-default, and so on.
dsnfrom
This file contains one line specifying the contents of the From: header that the
Courier mail server puts in all delivery status notifications. This file specifies a
complete header, except for the "From: " part. If dsnfrom is missing, then the Courier
mail server uses the following header: "Courier mail server mail server at me" <@>
dsnlimit
Maximum size, in bytes, of a message whose contents are included in delivery status
notifications. By default, the entire message is only included in non-delivery notices
(failures). Only the headers will be returned for delay notifications (warnings) and
return receipts; or for failures if the original message is larger than dsnlimit. If
missing, dsnlimit is set to 32K.
The sender can request that the entire message be returned even on delayed notices or
return receipts, however the Courier mail server will ignore this request if the
message size exceeds this limit.
enablefiltering
This configuration file enables the global mail filtering API for selected mail
sources. This file, if it exists, contains a single line of text that specifies which
kind of mail will be filtered. The possible values are:
esmtp
Enables global mail filtering for mail received via ESMTP.
local
Specifies that mail received from logged on users, via sendmail, and mail
forwarded from dot-courier(5)[4] will be filtered using the global mail filtering
API.
uucp
Specifies that mail received from UUCP will be filtered.
If you want to specify more than one source of mail, such as ESMTP and local mail,
specify both esmtp and local, separated by a space character.
Note
The global mail filtering API is described, in detail, in the courierfilter(8)[5]
manual page. This is NOT the traditional user-controlled mail filtering, such as
maildrop(1)[6]. A global mail filter is a daemon process that selectively accepts
or rejects incoming mail, based on arbitrary criteria.
esmtpacceptmailfor
This file lists all domains that the Courier mail server accepts mail for via ESMTP.
This file is in the same format as the locals file. If this file is missing, the
Courier mail server uses the single domain specified in me (or the system machine
name).
See the section called “Hostname-dependent configuration” for more information on
hostname-dependent configuration in the esmtpacceptmailfor configuration file.
esmtpacceptmailfor.dat and esmtpacceptmailfor.dir
esmtpacceptmailfor.dat is a binary database file that lists additional domains that
the Courier mail server accepts mail for, just like esmtpacceptmailfor. The binary
database file will be faster than a flat text file with a large number of domains. The
Courier mail server accepts mail for domains listed in either esmtpacceptmailfor or
esmtpacceptmailfor.dat. esmtpacceptmailfor.dat is created by the makeacceptmailfor
command from the contents of the esmtpacceptmailfor.dir directory. You can use both
esmtpacceptmailfor.dat and esmtpacceptmailfor at the same time. Put your most popular
domains in esmtpacceptmailfor, and put the rest of them into esmtpacceptmailfor.dat.
See the section called “Hostname-dependent configuration” for more information on
hostname-dependent configuration in the esmtpacceptmailfor.dir configuration files.
esmtpauthclient
This configuration file configures ESMTP authentication for the ESMTP client. This is
a text file of zero or more lines that contain the following fields:
relay userid password
When the Courier mail server connects to a remote ESMTP relay, the Courier mail server
will authenticate itself using userid and password. These fields are separated by one
or more whitespace characters. Because this file contains passwords, it must not be
world or group readable, and owned by the user "courier".
ESMTP negotiation will take place, and the Courier mail server will use a SASL
authentication method supported by both the Courier mail server and the remote ESMTP
server. Currently the Courier mail server supports PLAIN, LOGIN and CRAM-MD5
authentication. CRAM-MD5 is preferred over the other two, and PLAIN is preferred over
LOGIN.
The Courier mail server also supports ESMTP over SSL (the ESMTP STARTTLS extension).
If ESMTP STARTTLS is enabled, STARTTLS will be used to establish a secure link first.
The authentication will take place afterwards, over a secure channel.
Changes to this file take effect, more or less, immediately (existing connections are
not affected, but new connections will read the updated data).
esmtpd
This file is used to initialize the environment and parameters for courieresmtpd. A
default file will be provided during installation. See the comments in the file for
more information. For changes to this file to take effect you run the esmtpd stop
command followed by esmtpd start.
esmtpdelay
This file contains one line of text that specifies how long courieresmtp waits after a
failure to contact the remote mail server before another attempt is made.
courieresmtp (not to be confused with courieresmtpd) delivers outgoing mail to remote
mail servers. The timeout is specified as an integral number, optionally followed by m
- minutes, or h - hours. Otherwise it is specified in seconds.
The courieresmtp process delivers mail that's routed to external mail relays, via
ESMTP. When attempting to initally contact a mail server courieresmtp waits for the
amount of time specified by esmtptimeoutconnect (see below). esmtptimeoutconnect is
usually set to a relatively long period of time, in order to accomodate slow mail
servers. A large number of messages queued up for an unreachable mail server can tie
up delivery slots that can be put to a better use by reassigning them for mail to
another domain. Although the Courier mail server does not usually assign all delivery
slots for messages to the same domain (this is a tuneable parameter), it is still not
very healthy to have a bunch of courieresmtp daemons spinning their wheels, doing
nothing.
The situation worsens when there is a large number of mail relays that accept mail for
the same domain, and all of them are unreachable due to a network failure. That's
because the esmtptimeout waiting period is used for each individual mail relay.
Multiply esmtptimeout by the number of servers to see how large the delay really will
be.
esmtpdelay is implemented internally in the courieresmtp module. The main the Courier
mail server scheduling daemon is not aware of what's happening internally in
courieresmtp. When courieresmtp fails to contact any mail relay for the domain, the
message is postponed, and the esmtpdelay timer is set. Any additional messages
received by the same courieresmtp daemon (for the same domain), are immediately
postponed without any attempt to contact a remote mail relay. When the amount of time
set by esmtpdelay expires, courieresmtp will attempt to make another delivery attempt
as usual.
If esmtpdelay does not exist, the default delay is five minutes. Any messages that are
postponed look like any other temporary failure to courierd. Delivery attempts are
rescheduled as if a real temporary failure took place. Therefore it does not make
sense to set esmtpdelay to be greater than retryalpha (see below). When retryalpha is
smaller is esmtpdelay, you'll just messages spinning through the mail queue, with
useless delivery attempts being attempted because esmtpdelay still hasn't expired.
Occasionally you might observe somewhat strange behavior on systems with heavy mail
traffic. esmtpdelay applies separately to each individual instance of courieresmtp.
When a remote mail server keeps going up and down, it is possible to end up with
multiple courieresmtp daemons handling mail for the same domain, but only some of them
will encounter a network failure, purely by the luck of the draw. The remaining
daemons will be able to establish a connection. So you'll end up with some
courieresmtp daemons being able to deliver mail immediately, while the rest are still
waiting patiently for esmtpdelay to expire, postponing all messages in the meantime.
Some messages - but not all - will be immediately postponed without a delivery
attempt, becauses they ended up getting to a daemon which is waiting for esmtpdelay to
expire.
Another anomalous situation may happen when a courieresmtp daemon gets reassigned to
another domain, and then receives more mail for the previous domain. This can happen
when you have a lot of mail going through. Although the Courier mail server tries to
shuffle all mail for same domain into one pile, the scheduler still tries to dispatch
mail on "first-come, first-serve" basis, as much as possible. When that happens
another delivery attempt will be made immediately, because the previous esmtpdelay was
cancelled when the daemon got reassigned to another domain.
There can also be occasional abnormalities that affect systems with light traffic.
When there is a domain with several mail relays of equal priority, one mail relay is
chosen at random for the connection attempt. If some of the equal-priority mail relays
are unreachable and a courieresmtp daemon picks it, it will start the esmtpdelay timer
and refuse to deliver any more mail until it expires, even if most of the mail servers
are functional. This will happen only with mail relays of the lowest priority.
Otherwise, courieresmtp will always try to contact another mail relay of a still lower
priority, before giving up and setting the esmtpdelay timer. Another courieresmtp
daemon will not be started for the same domain if there's already an existing one, so
all delivery attempts will be turned away until esmtpdelay expires. Another
courieresmtp daemon will be started only in the event of multiple simultaneous
delivery attempts that happen to coincide at the same time.
This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that all courieresmtp daemons are killed after
a short period of total inactivity (currently one minute), so that longer intervals
specified by esmtpdelay are ignored. Note, however, that receiving a message to
deliver, and then postponing it immediately, does count as some activity.
esmtpdelay can be turned off by setting it to 0 seconds. esmtpdelay is designed for
servers that handle heavy amount of mail that wish to avoid having outbound delivery
slots tied up due to network failures, at an expense of an occasional anomalous
behavior due to harmless paranoia. esmtpdelay may prove to actually make things worse
for systems that carry only light mail traffic, if they are burdened with a task of
exchanging mail primarily with external systems that are not properly maintained.
esmtpgreeting
The complete greeting banner displayed by courieresmtpd. Changes to this file take
effect immediately.
esmtphelo
This file contains one line of text, what the Courier mail server calls itself in the
EHLO or HELO command sent to a remote SMTP server. me is used if this file does not
exist.
esmtphelo may also be set to a special value of “*”:
echo '*' >esmtphelo
(Note the single quotes, to prevent “*” from being expanded by the shell). The Courier
mail server will take the IP address of the local side of the connection to the remote
SMTP server, look up the IP address in DNS, and use the hostname from the reverse DNS
lookup. This might be useful when the Courier mail server server is multihomed. The
Courier mail server will look up the local IP address of each individual connection,
and use that in its EHLO or HELO command.
Note
Functioning DNS is required. Using the hosts file, or an equivalent, won't work.
This function uses the Courier mail server's native DNS resolver, which reads
/etc/resolv.conf and queries the listed DNS servers directly.
Note
See the section called “Servers with multiple IP addresses” for a better way of
accomplishing the same results.
esmtproutes
This file is used by the ESMTP module, and it contains one or more lines in the
following form:
domain:relay[,port][/SECURITY=STARTTLS][/SECURITY=REQUIRED][/SECURITY=SMTPS]
domain is any SMTP domain. relay specifies a fixed mail relay for this domain. relay
is optionally followed by a comma and a port number, to specify a port other than the
default port 25. If an address's domain is not found in esmtproutes, the Courier mail
server looks for MX and A records as usual (and always delivers to port 25). If the
domain is found in esmtproutes, however, any MX or A records for the domain are
ignored; instead the Courier mail server delivers the message to the specified relay.
relay can be another domain, or an explicit IP address inside brackets. For example,
if esmtproutes contains the following:
example.com: relay.domain.com
domain.com: [192.168.0.2]
Mail for example.com is delivered to relay.domain.com, ignoring any MX records for
example.com. Mail for domain.com will be delivered to the machine at IP address
192.168.0.2. All other domains will have their MX and A records looked up.
Note
Unlike Qmail, the Courier mail server looks up MX and A records for
relay.example.com (Qmail only looks up A records).
esmtproutes may contain comments, any line that starts with the # character is
ignored. Also, wildcards are allowed:
.example.com: [192.168.0.3],26
This specifies that any address of the form <anything@anything.example.com> will be
delivered to the mail server at this IP address, but on port 26.
esmtproutes is read from top to bottom, stopping as soon as a first match is found.
domain may be empty, this specifies a smarthost for all domains. For example, if
esmtproutes contains the following text:
example.com: relay.example.com
:[192.168.0.4]
This specifies that all mail to example.com is rerouted to relay.example.com. All
other mail is routed to the IP address 192.168.0.4.
If relay is empty, the Courier mail server interprets it as an explicit directive to
use MX and A records from DNS. For example:
example.com:
:[192.168.0.4]
This uses MX and A records for all messages to example.com. All other mail is rerouted
to the IP address 192.168.0.4.
The /SECURITY=STARTTLS flag indicates that mail to this domain will use the SECURITY
ESMTP extension. See the Courier mail server installation notes for a description of
SECURITY, what it does, and how to configure it.
Note
/SECURITY=STARTTLS does not refer to the standard implementation of SMTP over TLS,
but a Courier-specific extension. Courier automatically sends mail using
encryption if it's enabled and the remote server advertises STARTTLS.
/SECURITY=SMTPS uses an encrypted SMTP connection. This is an alternative to STARTTLS.
Encrypted SMTP uses a different port, port 465, which must be specified explicitly:
: relay.example.com,465 /SECURITY=SMTPS
This example forwards all mail to relay.example.com on port 465 using encrypted SMTP.
Note
If you intend to use /SECURITY=SMTPS to forward all your mail to your provider's
mail server over smtps additional you should also set ESMTP_TLS_VERIFY_DOMAIN=1,
TLS_VERIFYPEER=PEER, and TLS_TRUSTCERTS to a list of trusted certificate
authorities (Courier's configuration script should provide a default value for
TLS_TRUSTCERTS on most platforms), in the courierd configuration file.
Otherwise, TLS still gets used to send mail, but the smarthost's certificate does
not get validated. Properly-managed Internet providers should install a valid
certificate, signed by a trusted authority, if they require SMTPS. Poorly-managed
Internet providers will just install a self-signed certificate, and will not be
able to explain why they require SMTPS, if it's trivially compromised with a
man-in-the-middle attack that a non-validated certificate enables, so either find
a more competent provider, or use /SECURITY=SMTPS without actually enabling all
the extra validation that's actually needed to gain any kind of a secure mail
transmission channel.
A combination of broken mail servers written by incompetent programmers, and
poorly-managed Internet providers will result in a mail server that advertises the
ability to use an encrypted connection to receive mail, but either disconnect
immediately, or return an error message when the sender takes up the receiver's offer
to do so.
When the Courier mail server connects to another server that claims to support an
encrypted connection, tries to enable it, then fails because the other mail server
drops the connection or returns an error message, all subsequent connection attempts
to the same mail server will ignore the server's false advertising, and proceed to
send mail without attempting to enable encryption. The Courier mail server remembers
not to use the encryption with this server for the next 2-4 hours (depending on an
internal log file's rotation schedule). Once the remote mail server emerges from the
penalty box, the next connection attempt will try again, and see if it's still doesn't
work.
The /SECURITY=REQUIRED flag blocks the Courier mail server from sending mail to the
remote server unless a standard encryped connection can get established. If it's known
that the given mail server should only receive encrypted mail, /SECURITY=REQUIRED
prevents a man-in-the-middle attack where the remote mail server's advertisement of is
STARTTLS capability gets suppressed, and the mail gets sent in the clear.
Note
ESMTP_TLS_VERIFY_DOMAIN=1, TLS_VERIFYPEER=PEER, and TLS_TRUSTCERTS should also be
set, in the courierd configuration file, as described above, for the same reasons,
in this case.
To summarize:
/SECURITY=STARTTLS
Courier-specific extension, use a private certificate authority to set up a secure
mail network, while supporting regular encrypted TLS with the rest of the world.
/SECURITY=SMTPS
Use regular encrypted SSL/TLS with this mail server. Use this flag with an
esmtproutes entry to a server on port 465 (smtps).
/SECURITY=REQUIRED
Must use the STARTTLS extension to open a regular encrypted TLS connection with
this server on the regular SMTP port 25.
Changes to esmtproutes take effect immediately, more or less. Existing courieresmtp
processes that already have an established connection will ignore any changes.
esmtptimeout
This file contains one line of text that specifies the timeout for an SMTP command.
The timeout is specified as an integral number, optionally followed by m - minutes, or
h - hours. Otherwise it is specified in seconds. This timeout is used for all SMTP
commands, unless the SMTP command has a dedicated timeout defined by a different
configuration file. The default timeout is ten minutes.
esmtptimeoutconnect
This file contains one line of text that specifies the timeout for an SMTP connection
attempt. Most TCP/IP stacks wait an extraordinary long period of time for SMTP
connections to go through. This configuration setting limits the amount of time the
Courier mail server waits for the SMTP connection to complete. The default timeout is
one minute. Set esmtptimeoutconnect to 0 in order to use whatever default timeout your
TCP/IP stack uses.
esmtptimeoutdata
This file contains one line of text that specifies the timeout for transferring the
message contents or individual replies. The default timeout is five minutes. You WILL
HAVE TO bump this up if you're on a slow link, and you want to send large messages. A
28.8Kbps link can be optimistically expected to push 3,000 bytes per second. With a
five minute cutoff, you will not be able to send or receive anything larger than about
870 Kb. You have no business sending or receiving 870 Kb messagesl, if all you have is
an analog 28.8Kbps connection.
esmtptimeouthelo
This file contains one line of text that specifies the timeout for the initial EHLO or
HELO command. The Courier mail server will wait this amount of time to receive the
initial greeting banner from the remote SMTP server, and a response to the subsequent
EHLO/HELO command. The default value is 5 minutes.
esmtptimeoutkeepalive
This file contains one line of text that specifies how often outbound SMTP sessions
are kept idle after delivering a message. After the Courier mail server connects to an
SMTP server and completes the attempt to deliver the message, the SMTP session is kept
idle for this time interval before being shut down. If the Courier mail server
receives another message for the same domain, it will be delivered using the existing
SMTP session, instead of establishing a new one. Note that some SMTP servers have a
very short idle timeout, Qmail's is only two minutes. The default value is 60 seconds.
Note that there's also a separate limit to the maximum number of simultaneous SMTP
sessions to the same domain. That limit is currently four, which is adequate for
nearly every situation, so for now it will be set by an undocumented configuration
file.
esmtptimeoutkeepaliveping
This file contains one line of text that specifies how often the Courier mail server
will issue a useless RSET command when the connection is idle (see
esmtptimeoutkeepalive). While waiting for any more messages to deliver to the same
domain, or for the esmtptimeoutkeepalive interval to expire, courieresmtp will
transmit RSET commands at regular intervals specified by this configuration file. The
default value is 0 seconds, which turns off the keepalive ping altogether. This
configuration settings must be for a shorter time interval than esmtptimeoutkeepalive
for it to make any sense. Note that other system administrators may consider this to
be a very rude thing to do. Also keep in mind that this may generate quite a bit of
idle traffic. If you have the Courier mail server configured for a maximum number of
200 outbound SMTP sessions and a 30 second esmtptimeoutkeepaliveping setting, then you
can have as much as an average of around seven pings every second!
esmtptimeoutquit
This file contains one line of text that specifies how long the Courier mail server
waits for the external SMTP server to acknowledge the QUIT command, before the Courier
mail server unilaterally tears down the connection. The default value is 10 seconds.
This must be a small value because the Courier mail server needs to be able to shut
down quickly, on very short notice.
faxqueuetime
This file specifies how long the Courier mail server normally tries to repeatedly
resend a fax message (if the courierfax module is enabled). The default E-mail message
retry timeout (the queuetime setting) is one week, which is a reasonable timeout value
for E-mail messages (taking into account downed circuits, or crashed servers).
However, it doesn't make sense to keep trying to redeliver fax messages for a whole
week.
faxqueuetime specifies the timeout for fax messages. This time interval is specified
in the same way as queuetime (see queuetime for more information).
faxnotifyrc
This file specifies which mailbox the Courier mail server should deliver received
faxes (if this option is enabled). See the Courier mail server's installation notes
for more information.
faxrc
This file configures the Courier mail server's outbound faxing and dialing parameters.
Consult the comments in the default file for additional information, and the
courierfax(8)[7] manual page for more information.
hosteddomains
This file lists locally-hosted domains. It is very similar in function to the locals
control file. Any address with a domain listed in hosteddomains is considered to be a
local address. The difference between hosteddomains and locals is that domains listed
in hosteddomains are not removed from individual addresses before looking up the
location of their mailboxes. For example, if the domain "example.com" appears in
locals, the address user@example.com will have example.com removed, and then the
Courier mail server will look for a local mailbox named "user".
If the domain "example.com" appears in hosteddomains instead, the Courier mail server
will look for a local mailbox named "user@example.com" instead.
The contents of the hosteddomains configuration file is a list of domains, one per
line, in lowercase. You must run the makehosteddomains command, followed by courier
restart (this restarts the server) for any changes to take effect.
Additionally, hosteddomains can specify simple domain aliases. See the complete
description in the makehosteddomains(8)[8] manual page.
See the section called “Hostname-dependent configuration” for more information on
hostname-dependent configuration in the locals configuration file.
ipout, ip6out
Non-default IP addresses to send outgoing ESMTP messages from. See the section called
“Servers with multiple IP addresses” and the section called “Simulating a server with
multiple IP addresses”, below, for more information.
ldapaddressbook
This file is used by the webmail server. It contain a default systemwide list of
accessible LDAP address books. A default file will be installed, listing some common
Internet address books. Each line in this file contains the following information:
name<tab>host<tab>port<tab>suffix<tab>binddn<tab>bindpw
"<tab>" is the ASCII tab character. “name” is the unique name for this LDAP server.
“host” and “port” specify the connection parameters. “suffix” specifies the root LDAP
entry whose subtree gets searched. The “binddn” and “bindpw” fields are not presently
used (they were used in earlier version of the webmail server, before the LDAP search
interface was rewritten and simplified).
ldapaliasrc
This file is used by the courierldapaliasd process. See courierldapaliasd(8)[9] for
more information.
locallowercase
If this file exists, the Courier mail server will not distinguish being lowercase and
uppercase local accounts, so that john@example.com and John@example.com will refer to
the same local mailbox (where example.com is your domain). Postmaster, postmaster,
and POSTMASTER always refer to the same account, even if locallowercase does not
exist.
Note
If locallowercase exists you cannot have any system accounts that contain
uppercase letters. locallowercase applies only to local mail. Mail addressed to
external domains will always have the case of the addresses preserved.
locals
This file contains one or more lines of text, where each line contains a valid mail
domain. Any E-mail address without @domain, or with a domain that can be found in
locals will be considered to be an address of a local mailbox. A domain can be
specified with a leading dot:
.domain.com
This is called a "wildcard". Any domain ending in domain.com, such as a.domain.com,
b.domain.com, a.b.c.domain.com - but NOT somedomain.com - will be considered local.
Note that domain.com is NOT included in this wildcard. Both "domain.com" and
".domain.com" should be listed.
Specific hosts can be excluded from the wildcard. Example:
!host.domain.com
.domain.com
anything.domain.com is considered to be a local domain, except for host.domain.com.
Note that "!host.domain.com" must appear in locals before the .domain.com wildcard.
The "!hostname" syntax is also valid in the esmtpacceptmailfor control file.
If locals does not exist, the Courier mail server uses the contents of the me control
file (note that me specifies only one domain, second and subsequent lines are
ignored). Also, see hosteddomains.
See the section called “Hostname-dependent configuration” for more information on
hostname-dependent configuration in the locals configuration file.
localtimeout
This file specifies the watchdog timer for local mail deliveries. If a local mail
delivery attempt does not complete in the proscribed time interval, the delivering
process ID is killed. The time interval in localtimeout is specified in the same way
as queuetime (see queuetime for more information).
logindomainlist
If this file exists then the webmail login screen will have a drop-down list whose
contents will be read from this file. This file should contain a list of E-mail
domains, one per line. It should be created if the Courier mail server's webmail
server is used to provide mail access for more than one domain. Instead of typing
"user@domain" to log in, it will only be necessary to enter "user", and select the
domain from the drop-down list. If this file does not exist it will be necessary to
enter the full E-mail address into the webmail login screen. The enhanced
logindomainlist makes it possible to specify a separate list of domain for each
virtual web site, and more control over the defaults.
What if you don't want to display a drop down menu? Administrators can now specify
records that generate a hidden field in login.html, or an editable text field,
allowing sqwebmail to show only one mail login domain to each user per access URL or
IP address. This functionality can greatly reduce confusion for first time webmail
users, and greatly speed the login process for frequent webmail users.
Finally, the new logindomainlist file offers a new tool to ease maintenance.
Administrators can now use wildcards to "rewrite" the domain portion of the access URL
to the mail domain equivalent. For example, the following record can rewrite the URL
"mail.*.com" to the mail domain "*.com"
*.com:mail.*.com:@
This powerful wildcard functionality can ease the login process for most of your
server's mail domains with just one or two logindomainlist records.
File Format
Let's take a look at the NEW logindomainlist file format:
firstfield:secondfield:thirdfield
Above, we can see that the new logindomainlist records are made up of three fields
delimited by colons. But what does each field do?
First Field - the first field contains the "mail domain" for which we would like
the user to log in under. The mail domain is the part of an email address after
the @ symbol. For example, in the email address "user@domain.com", "domain.com" is
the mail domain.
Second Field - the second field contains the "access domain". The access domain
contains an URL or IP address that is used to figure out which mail domain to use
by default. For example, in the following logindomainlist record:
domain1.com:domain2.com
"domain2.com" is the "access domain" and "domain1.com" is the "mail domain". If
the user logs into the following URL:
http://domain2.com/cgi-bin/sqwebmail
His default "mail domain" will be "domain1.com".
Third Field - the third field may contain a modifier. The modifier may be either a
single character modifier, or a group identification string. The single character
modifiers and the group modifier are described in detail below.
Finally, the logindomainlist file may also contain comments and empty lines. Empty
lines can be used to group records visually, and comments can be used to explain
why a certain record or group of records look the way they do.
If the first character of a line is a '#', then the entire line is considered a
comment and is ignored. If the first character of a line contains whitespace, the
entire line is assumed to be an empty line and is ignored.
Modifiers
@ - the '@' modifier can be used to create a hidden field on the login.html page
which contains the default mail domain. In addition, this field will automatically
display the default mail domain in plain text to the right of the userid text box.
Note
The '@' modifier ALLOWS the use of wildcards to automate the relationship
between "access domains" and "mail domains". See the heading "Wildcards" below
for more information about wildcarding.
- - the '-' modifier can be used to create an editable text field on the
login.html page which contains the default mail domain.
Note
The '-' modifier ALLOWS the use of wildcards to automate the relationship
between "access domains" and "mail domains". See the heading "Wildcards" below
for more information about wildcarding.
group string - If no modifier is specified in the third field, or if the third
field modifier is a group identifier string, then a drop down menu will be
displayed on the login.html page. Records with the SAME group string will be
displayed together in the drop down. For example, if your logindomainlist file
contains the following records:
domain1.com:domain2.com:firstgroup
domain3.com:domain4.com:firstgroup
domain5.com:domain6.com:firstgroup
domain7.com:domain8.com:secondgroup
domain9.com:domain10.com:secondgroup
And the user logs into sqwebmail with the following URL:
http://domain4.com/cgi-bin/sqwebmail
He will see a drop down containing ONLY the following domains:
domain1.com
domain3.com
domain5.com
"domain3.com" will be automatically selected, or defaulted. Only the records in
the firstgroup will be visible to the user. This functionality is great for
organizations with more than one mail domain.
Note
The group string modifier does NOT allow the use of wildcards to automate the
relationship between "access domains" and "mail domains". This is because drop
down menus are fundamentally incompatible with wildcards.
Wildcards
If a record's modifier allows wildcarding (See "Modifiers" above for information
about which modifiers allow wildcarding and which do not.) then the first and
second fields of that record _MAY_ contain wildcards. Wildcards match against the
HTTP_HOST CGI environment variable only. IP addresses can NOT be used if either
the first or second fields contain the wildcard character. However, if neither the
first nor second fields contain the wildcard character, then the second field can
contain an IP address.
In the logindomainlist file, an asterisk (*) character in either the first and/or
second field represents a wildcard. Any asterisk in the second field will be used
to match an access domain. If an asterisk exists in the first field then any
characters which the asterisk in the second field represents will replace the
asterisk in the first field when sqwebmail determines the default mail domain.
However, asterisks are not required in either the first or second fields. They are
totally optional. For example, given the following logindomainlist record:
*.com:mail.*.com:@
If the user logs into sqwebmail with the following URL:
http://mail.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/sqwebmail
The asterisk in the second field will represent the string "mydomain". This string
will then replace the asterisk in the first field to give the following default
mail domain: mydomain.com
Similarly, if the following record exists in the logindomainlist file:
*:*:@
Then ANY URL the user uses to access sqwebmail will be automatically used for the
default mail domain.
But the first field doesn't _HAVE_ to contain an asterisk. The following will work
just fine:
mydomain.com:mydomain.*:@
The above example will allow the user to access the "mydomain.com" mail domain
from any of the following URLs: "mydomain.org", "mydomain.net", "mydomain.us",
etc...
And finally, the first field doesn't have to contain anything at all! If the first
field is empty, that record will serve as an explicit no-default mail domain. No
default mail domain will be specified if the second field matches the user's login
URL. This is useful because the logindomainlist is searched from the top down. Any
wildcard records at the bottom of the list will be overridden by records closer to
the top. An "explicit no-default" record can be used to specify certain domains as
"system account" domains so that no default mail domain is specified.
maildirfilterconfig
This file, if exists, sets the global defaults for mail filtering in the webmail
server. Mail filtering in the webmail server is a subject worthy of special mention. A
full description of how to install and configure webmail-based mail filtering is
included in the installation notes for the Courier mail server. Refer to the
installlation instructions for additional information.
maildirshared
This file, if exists, specifies the location of shared maildirs for the webmail and
IMAP server. Normally, each mailbox must be separately configured to access every
shared maildir, by the maildirmake(1)[10] command. This file allows shared maildirs to
be set globally for everyone. Everyone's webmail and IMAP server will pick up the
shared maildirs specified in this file. See maildirmake(1)[10] for more information.
maildrop
This file contains one line whose contents is a pathname to the maildrop(1)[6] mail
delivery agent. If the Courier mail server knows that the delivery agent used to
delivery mail locally is maildrop(1)[6] then certain delivery optimizations are
possible. This configuration file does NOT actually specify that maildrop(1)[6] should
be used as a local mail delivery agent, it only specifies where maildrop(1)[6] is
installed. The default local mail delivery instructions are specified in the courierd
configuration file. If the specified delivery instruction specify running an external
program whose pathname matches the one specified by this configuration file, the
Courier mail server assumes that it's maildrop(1)[6], and will use maildrop-specific
options to optimize mail delivery.
This configuration file is initialized, by default, to point to the version of
maildrop(1)[6] that's integrated with the Courier mail server. The integrated version
of maildrop(1)[6] is configured slightly differently than the standalone version of
maildrop(1)[6].
Although you can set the maildrop configuration file to point to some other version of
the maildrop mail filter, you MUST set the maildropfilter configuration file (see
below), to point to the integrated version of maildrop.
maildropfilter
This file contains one line whose contents is a pathname to the maildrop(1)[6] mail
delivery filter. In addition to being a delivery agent, maildrop can also be used as a
mail filtering engine. If this file exists, the Courier mail server will be capable of
invoking recipient-specified mail filters when a message is received. If the mail
filtering rules reject the message, the Courier mail server will not accept the
message for delivery. This means that when receiving mail via ESMTP, the Courier mail
server will reject the ESMTP transaction without even accepting the message from the
remote mail server.
This file is not installed by default. To activate mail filtering for local
recipients, simply copy the contents of the maildrop configuration file to
maildropfilter.
maildroprc
This file contains systemwide mail filtering instructions for maildrop(1)[6]
deliveries. This configuration file is optional, and is used by maildrop(1)[6] when it
is invoked as a traditional post-delivery mail filter. See maildropfilter(6)[11] for
more information.
me
This file contains one line whose contents is a fully-qualified domain name. When a
single installation of the Courier mail server is shared over a network, each machine
that's running the Courier mail server must have a unique me file. A missing me
defaults to the gethostname() system call (see the section called “Hostname-dependent
configuration” for more information on hostname-dependent configuration).
Warning
Changing me requires rerunning the makealiases command again, else mail can
bounce. Without this configuration file defined changing the system's hostname
also requires rerunning makealiases.
msgidhost
If a message does not have a Message-ID: header, the Courier mail server may decide to
create one. The host portion of the new header will be set to the contents of
msgidhost, which contains one line of text. If msgidhost does not exist, me will be
used in its place. Changes to this file take effect immediately.
nochangingfrom
The Courier mail server's webmail server lets the contents of the From: header be set
for mailed messages. If this configuration file exists, the ability to set the
contents of the From: header is disabled.
queuelo, queuehi, queuefill
These configuration settings tune the Courier mail server's mail queue processing. The
Courier mail server does not load the entire mail queue metadata in memory. queuelo
contains a number that specifies the queue “low watermark” message count. queuehi
contains a number that specifies the queue “high watermark” message count. queuefill
specifies a time interval, “queue refill” in seconds. The number in queuefill may
optionally be followed by "m", indicating that the queue refill is specified in
minutes.
queuehi specifies the maximum number of messages that are loaded into memory. The
Courier mail server reads the mail queue on disk until either it reads all of it, or
it reads the number of messages specified by queuehi. As messages are delivered they
are removed from the memory and disk. Messages that are deferred for another delivery
attempt are removed from memory, but kept on the disk.
When the number of messages in memory falls below queuelo, The Courier mail server
goes back to disk and attempts to fill the memory queue to the top, again.
This is, basically, a capsule summary of the mail queue processing logic. Many small,
low level details are omitted; this is just an executive overview. When new messages
arrive during a large mail backlog, the new messages are also loaded into the memory
queue, if there's room for them. Therefore, during a large mail backlog the Courier
mail server simultaneously tries to clear the existing backlog, and process any new
mail at the same time. Up to the Courier mail server 0.41, all of this generally
translates to the Courier mail server giving priority to newly arrived mail, and
processing the backed up mail queue if spare resources are available.
The queuefill setting was added in the Courier mail server 0.42, in an attempt to keep
new mail from excessively delaying existing mail during a major queue backup.
queuefill specifies a time interval. When the Courier mail server completely fills the
memory queue it sets a timer. After the interval given by queuefill The Courier mail
server will go back and re-fill the mail queue even if the number of messages did not
fall below the low watermark. If the Courier mail server finds older messages in the
mail queue they will be pushed to the top of the scheduling queue, and given priority.
Smaller queuefill time intervals means more frequent trips to the disk, and more
overhead. But, in exchange for that, during a mail backlog the Courier mail server
will spend more time handling a greater number of delayed messages. Larger queuefill
time intervals means less frequent trips to the disk, and less overhead, in exchange
for less "fairness" during large mail backlogs.
queuefill defaults to five minutes, if not specified. Explicitly setting it to 0
seconds turns off the queue re-filling completely, essentially reverting to pre-0.42
behavior. The default queuelo and queuehi values are computed at run time. queuelo
defaults to the larger of 200, and the sum total of configured mail delivery slots,
both local and remote. queuehi, if not explicitly set, defaults to the smaller of
twice the queuelo, or queuelo plus 1000.
queuetime
This file specifies how long the Courier mail server normally tries to repeatedly
deliver a message, before giving up and returning it as undeliverable. Messages are
immediately returned as undeliverable when a permanent failure is encountered (such as
the recipient address not being valid). Attempts to deliver the message when there's a
temporary, transient, error (such as the network being down) will be repeatedly made
for the duration of time specified by this configuration file. This file contains a
number followed by the letter 'w' for weeks, or 'd' for days. It is also possible to
use 'h' for hours, 'm' for minutes, or 's' for seconds. Only integers are allowed,
fractions are prohibited. However, you can use '1w2d' to specify one week and two
days. If queuetime is missing, the Courier mail server makes repeated delivery
attempts for one week.
retryalpha, retrybeta, retrygamma, retrymaxdelta
These control files specify the schedule with which the Courier mail server tries to
deliver each message that has a temporary, transient, delivery failure. retryalpha
and retrygamma contain a time interval, specified in the same way as queuetime.
retrybeta and retrymaxdelta contain small integral numbers only.
The Courier mail server will first make retrybeta delivery attempts, waiting for the
time interval specified by retryalpha between each attempt. Then, the Courier mail
server waits for the amount of time specified by retrygamma, then the Courier mail
server will make another retrybeta delivery attempts, retryalpha amount of time apart.
If still undeliverable, the Courier mail server waits retrygamma*2 amount of time
before another retrybeta delivery attempts, with retryalpha amount of time apart. The
next delay will be retrygamma*4 amount of time long, the next one retrygamma*8, and so
on. retrymaxdelta sets the upper limit on the exponential backoff. Eventually the
Courier mail server will keep waiting retrygamma*(2^retrymaxdelta) amount of time
before making retrybeta delivery attempts retryalpha amount of time apart, until the
queuetime interval expires.
The default values are:
retryalpha
Five minutes
retrybeta
Three times
retrygamma
Fifteen minutes
retrymaxdelta
Three
This results in the Courier mail server delivering each message according to the
following schedule, in minutes: 5, 5, 5, 15, 5, 5, 30, 5, 5, 60, 5, 5, then repeating
120, 5, 5, until the message expires.
sizelimit
Maximum size of the message, in bytes, that the Courier mail server accepts for
delivery. The Courier mail server rejects larger messages. If sizelimit is set to
zero, The Courier mail server accepts as large message as available disk space
permits. If the environment variable SIZELIMIT is set at the time a new message is
received, it takes precedence and the Courier mail server uses the contents of the
environment variable instead. Changes to this file take effect immediately. The
SIZELIMIT environment variable is for use by individual mail submission agents. For
example, it can be set by the smtpaccess configuration file (see makesmtpaccess(8)[3]
for more information) for mail from certain IP addresses.
If sizelimit does not exist, and SIZELIMIT is not set, the maximum message size
defaults to 10485760 bytes.
submitdelay
submitdelay specifies the delay before the first delivery attempt for a message that
has been entered into the mail queue. Normally, the first delivery attempt is made as
soon as possible. This setting delays the initial delivery attempt. It is normally
used when you have a mail filter installed that detects duplicate messages arriving in
a short period of time. If the mail filter detects this situation it can use the
cancelmsg(1)[12] command to reject duplicate messages in the queue (and return them
back to the envelope sender).
submitdelay specifies a time interval in the same format as queuetime.
usexsender
If this configuration file exists, the Courier mail server's webmail server will set
the X-Sender: header on all outgoing messages. This is a good idea if the webmail
server allows the user to set the contents of the From: header. Note that the Courier
mail server records the system userid of the sender in all locally-sent messages
(which includes messages mailed by the webmail server), which is sufficient in most
cases. In cases where you have many virtual accounts that share the same system
userid, this configuration file provides a way to positively identify the sender of
the outgoing message.
uucpme
uucpme sets the UUCP nodename of the Courier mail server mail relay. See
courieruucp(8)[13] for more information.
uucpneighbors
uucpneighbors is used by the courieruucp module to specify the Courier mail server's
configuration for relaying mail via UUCP. See courieruucp(8)[13] for more information.
uucprewriteheaders
If this file exists, headers of messages sent to/from UUCP addresses will be
rewritten. Normally, only the message envelope sender and recipients are rewritten,
the existence of this file causes the headers to be rewritten as well.
vhost.ip-address, vhost.domain
Enable per-message virtual configuration settings described in the section called
“Servers with multiple IP addresses” and the section called “Simulating a server with
multiple IP addresses”, below, for more information.
warntime
warntime specifies an amount of time in the same format as queuetime. If a message
still has not been delivered after this period of time, the Courier mail server sends
a warning message (a "delayed" Delivery Status Notification) to the sender. If
warntime is missing, the Courier mail server sets warntime to four hours.
Note
The time interval specified by warntime is only approximate. The Courier mail
server sends a delayed Delivery Status Notification at the conclusion of the first
attempted delivery after warntime has elapsed.
Hostname-dependent configuration
This section describes how to set the various domain-related parameters incorporating the
server's system-specified hostname. This makes it possible to create a canned, boilerplate
set of Courier configuration files. The configuration files then get replicated, as is, to
multiple servers. These servers have their system hostname externally managed, often via
DHCP. The server's assigned hostname gets automatically incorporated into Courier's
configuration.
me
When the contents of the me configuration file begin with “*.”, the asterisk gets
replaced by the system's hostname. For example:
• me contains:
*.example.com
• The system's assigned hostname is “mx1”.
• The effective contents of the me configuration file is “mx1.example.com”
Note
A fully-qualified system hostname does not require an explicit me configuration
file. If me configuration file doesn't exist it defaults to the entire (fully
qualified) system hostname.
locals, esmtpacceptmailfor/esmtpacceptmailfor.dir and hosteddomains
When a line in these configuration files is “*” or begins with “*.”, the asterisk gets
replaced by the system's hostname. For example:
• A line in locals contains:
*.example.com
• The system's assigned hostname is “mx1”.
• This line in the locals configuration file is effectively equivalent to
“mx1.example.com”
• A line in hosteddomains contains:
*
• The system's assigned hostname is “mx1.example.com”.
• This line in the hosteddomains configuration file is effectively equivalent to
“mx1.example.com”
Webmail template files
HTML output from the webmail server is generated from the template files in
/usr/lib/courier/sqwebmail/html/en-us. It is possible to translate the webmail interface
into another language simply by creating another subdirectory underneath
/usr/lib/courier/sqwebmail/html, then meticulously translating each .html file. Each
template file contains well-formed HTML, with dynamic content marked off by tags. Note
that the large comment blocks in each HTML file need to be translated too, since they are
inserted as dynamic content, elsewhere.
The directory /usr/lib/courier/sqwebmail/html/en-us also contains several configuration
files, in addition to the HTML template files. Doing so allows this configuration
information to be defined for each available language.
CHARSET
This file consists of a single line of text, which names the character set used by the
HTML template files. It is possible to specify multiple character set, by separating
them with commas, provided that HTML templates use only the common portions of all
listed character set.
The default English HTML templates use strictly the “us-ascii” subset, and the CHARSET
contains utf-8,iso-8859-1. When multiple character sets are listed, the first
character set that's supported by the browser is picked, so with UTF-8 capable
browsers the default webmail interface will use UTF-8, falling back to ISO-8859-1 for
browsers that do not support UTF-8.
footer
The contents of this file, if it exists, are appended to all messages sent by the
webmail server.
ISPELLDICT
This file consists of a single line of text, which contains the name of the dictionary
used for spell-checking. It is passed as an argument to ispell, or aspell.
LANGUAGE
This file consists of a single line of text, which should always be the same as the
name of its directory (en-us).
LANGUAGE_PREF
This file is not needed at runtime, its contents are used during installation. See
webmail/html/README_LANG in the source distribution for more information.
LOCALE
The corresponding C locale for these templates.
TIMEZONELIST
This file lists the available timezones on the login screen. See the comments in this
file for more information.
Sender Policy Framework Keywords
The Courier mail server can perform “Sender Policy Framework” checks on up to three
addresses for each message. This is controlled by setting the following variables:
BOFHSPFHELO, BOFHSPFMAILFROM, and BOFHSPFFROM. Each variable is set to a comma-separated
list of the following keywords: “off” - SPF verification disabled (default); “none”,
“neutral”, “pass”, “fail”, “softfail”, “error”, “unknown” - these keywords correspond to
the possible results of an SPF check, the message is accepted for the listed SPF results
only, any other SPF result is rejected; “all” - shorthand for all possible SPF results,
use “all” to run SPF in informational mode only, recording the SPF status in the
Received-SPF: header; “allowok” - automatically pass the SPF verification if the sender's
IP address is found in a DNS access whitelist, any whitelist given in the -allow option to
couriertcpd, see the “DNS ACCESS LISTS” section in couriertcpd(1)[14].
A rejected SPF result gets kicked back with a permanent error indication if the SPF result
is listed in BOFHSPFHARDERROR, and a temporary error indication otherwise.
When enabling SPF checking, the keyword list should always include “pass” (it makes no
sense to do otherwise) and “none”. The keyword list should also include “softfail”,
“neutral”, and “unknown”. See the SPF draft for a description of these status results. At
some distant future, the keyword list will only include “pass”, rejecting all senders
without a stated policy. This might be desirable at some point in the future, but not
right now.
The BOFHSPFFROM list may also include an additional keyword, “mailfromok”.
BOFHSPFMAILFROM and BOFHSPFFROM are trade-offs. Using BOFHSPFMAILFROM is faster, and it
does not require the entire message to be received, before running the SPF check.
BOFHSPFFROM checking can only occur after the entire message is received, but it's more
reliable. If “mailfromok” is listed, the From: is not checked if the MAIL FROM command was
checked with the “pass” result.
In other words: the From: header is checked if MAIL FROM was empty, or did not pass the
SPF checks. If MAIL FROM passed the SPF check the Courier mail server won't bother looking
at the From: header.
Note
A conservative policy should not reject failed SPF checks from the From:header,
because it can be counterproductive in some situations. This is because when a sender
from a domain with a published SPF policy sends a message to a mailing list, the
message goes through the mailing list processor's IP address, and it will fail the SPF
check unless the domain SPF explicitly authorizes the mailing list processor's IP
address.
This is very unlikely. The end result is that domains with a published SPF record get
punished, and domains without an SPF record get off scott free. Mailing lists should
be encouraged to publish their own SPF records for mailing list traffic; then the
“mailfromok” keyword can validate the mailing list's return address, and forego
checking of the “From:” header from the mailing list, while still checking the “From:”
header from everyone else.
Another alternative is to use opt BOFHSPFFROM=all for advisory purposes only.
Post-delivery mail filters can key off the “Received-SPF” header.
Note
The Courier mail server can add up to three “Received-SPF” headers of its own, one for
each SPF check. The Courier mail server renames any existing “Received-SPF” header as
“Old-Received-SPF”. All “Received-SPF” headers delivered to a local mailbox will
always come from the Courier mail server.
Servers with multiple IP addresses
The Courier mail server's default configuration listens on port 25 on all IP addresses. If
the server has more than one IP address, Courier accepts connections on any IP address.
Adjust the settings in the esmtpd configuration file to explicitly list which IP addresses
Courier should listenson. This also applies to the ESMTP over SSL server on port 465
configured by esmtpd-ssl, and the MSA server on port 587, configured by esmtpd-msa.
That's for incoming EMSTP. For outgoing ESMTP connections, the Courier mail server does
not specify an IP address by default, and lets the server select one. The server selects a
default IP address based on a server's network configuration. The selection criteria is
platform specific, and is typically based on the system's IP routing tables.
The ipout and ip6out configuration files set an explicit IP address for Courier's outgoing
connections:
# echo "192.168.0.1" >/etc/courier/ipout
# echo "fec0::230:48ff:fec4:429c" >/etc/courier/ip6out
This example specifies 192.168.0.1 as the IP address to make connections from for IPv4
destinations, and fec0::230:48ff:fec4:429c for IPv6 destinations.
If the Courier mail server runs on a host with two IPv4 addresses, 192.168.0.1,
192.168.1.1, the above example uses 192.168.0.1 to send the relayed message to IPv4
destinations even if Courier received the message from a client that connected to the
other addresses.
If the Courier mail server accepts an ESMTP connection and a message from an authenticated
client with relaying privileges, in a smarthost role, and forwards the message via ESMTP,
Courier normally uses the server's default IP address, or the one set by ipout or ipout6.
When the Courier mail servers runs on more than one IP address, it's possible to
selectively set the outgoing IP address based on which one of those IP addresses the
message was received at. A simple, basic configuration forwards the message from the same
IP addresses it was received from, but it doesn't have to be, it can be a different one.
The first step is to enable a per-message, non-default configuration settings, like the
outgoing IP address, by creating a zero-length vhost.ip-address file:
# touch >/etc/courier/vhost.192.168.0.1
# touch >"/etc/courier/vhost.fec0::230:48ff:fec4:429c"
This enables non-default settings for messages received from a client that connects to one
of these IP addresses. These two IP addresses (one IPv4 and one IPv6 address) are,
presumably, two of the server's IP addresses. This is not a client's IP address, these are
the server's IP addresses. These may be the only two IP addresses the server has, or the
server can have more IP addresses, but these are the only two IP addresses for which
custom settings get enabled.
One such custom setting would be a different IP address for outgoing connections depending
on the IP address of the connection the message was originally received from:
# echo "192.168.0.1" >/etc/courier/ipout.192.168.0.1
# echo "192.168.1.1" >/etc/courier/ipout.192.168.1.1
“ipout.address” sets the IP address for outgoing connections for messages received from a
client connection to “address” only. Just an ipout applies to all other messages, except
ones which have an ipout.address in existence. The above example specifies that, on a
server with these two IP addresses, messages received from a client that's connected to
either IP address get forwarded (from a client that normally authenticates and receives
relaying privileges) using a connection from the same IP address. If the server has any
other IP addresses, the IP address in ipout takes effect (or the default system-specified
IP address).
For convenience, an empty ipout.address gets interpreted as if it contains the same
address. The above example is equivalent to:
# touch /etc/courier/ipout.192.168.0.1
# touch /etc/courier/ipout.192.168.1.1
The formal configuration rules are as follows, for a message received from IP address
“address”, which may be an IPv4 or an IPv6 address:
• The IPv4 address and the IPv6 address for outgoing ESMTP connections get specified by
the contents of /etc/courier/ipout.address and /etc/courier/ip6out.address,
respectively.
• If the file exists, but is empty, the same address becomes the IP address for the
outgoing connection.
• The above rules are in effect only if /etc/courier/vhost.address exists,
• If the file does not exist, or if /etc/courier/vhost.address does not exist, the
contents of /etc/courier/ipout, for IPv4 connections, and /etc/courier/ip6out, for
IPv6 connections set the IP address.
• Otherwise, the Courier mail server uses the default IP address determined by the
system's network configuration.
• In /etc/courier/ipout.address and /etc/courier/ip6out.address, an address of "0" also
specifies the system's default IP address.
It is possible for the Courier mail server to receive a message from an IPv6 connection,
and forward it to an IPv4 address, or vice versa. The address portion of
/etc/courier/ipout.address and /etc/courier/ip6out.address, specifies the IP address the
client used to connect to Courier and may be either an IPv4 or an IPv6 address, in both
cases! For example:
# echo "192.168.0.1" >/etc/courier/ipout.192.168.0.1
# echo "fec0::230:48ff:fec4:429c" >/etc/courier/ip6out.192.168.0.1
This means that when a client connects to the Courier mail server using the IP address
192.168.0.1 and relays a message, if the message gets forwarded to an IPv4 address,
Courier uses the same IP address, and if it gets forwarded to an IPv6 address Courier uses
this IPv6 address. The above also probably means that:
# echo "192.168.0.1" >"/etc/courier/ipout.fec0::230:48ff:fec4:429c"
# echo "fec0::230:48ff:fec4:429c" >"/etc/courier/ipout.fec0::230:48ff:fec4:429c"
So if an IPv6 client connects to Courier on this IPv6 address and relays a message,
Courier uses the same IPv6 address, or 192.168.0.1 depending on the destination.
Note
Notwithstanding the IP address set in an ipout or an ip6out file, the server's network
configuration must be able to actually establish a network connection to the
destination address from the explicitly specified IP address. Specifying an explicit
IP address for outgoing connections implies that the IP addresses are fully and
globally routable.
Additionally, for all other configuration files described in this manual page, the Courier
mail server uses “filename.address” if it exists, in place of “filename” when processing
messages received from “address”, either an IPv4 or an IPv6 address.
This is used in all contexts where it makes sense to do so:
# echo "relay.example.com" >/etc/courier/me.192.168.0.1
# echo "firewall.example.com" >/etc/courier/me.192.168.1.1
This example specifies “relay.example.com” as the contents of the me configuration file,
described earlier in this manual page, when processing messages received by clients that
connect to 192.168.0.1, and “firewall.example.com” for processing messages received by
clients that connect to 192.168.1.1.
“me” is the default hostname for most common Courier mail server configuration settings,
such as the server's name in the ESMTP greeting banner, what Courier calls itself in the
ESMTP EHLO/HELO commands, and other contexts, unless overridden by a more specific
setting.
Note
The IP address-specific configuration settings get used only in the context of
processing messages, and have no impact on other parts of the Courier mail server that
do not have a direct relationship to a specific message. One such example would be
when Courier authenticates a client's username or password. This is not directly
related to any message the client may or may not send after it authenticates, so this
happens in exactly the same way no matter which IP address the client connected to.
Simulating a server with multiple IP addresses
As described in the previous section, the existence of vhost.ip-address enables
configuration settings only for messages that were received at one of the IP addresses
that the Courier mail server accepts connections on.
It's possible to partially achieve the same end results by creating vhost.domain:
# touch >/etc/courier/vhost.example.com
This enables per-message specific configuration for messages received from authenticated
clients whose authenticated ID ends with “@example.com”. If the server has more than one
IP address, but, for whatever reason, only receives mail on one of them but wants to use
the other one for outgoing mail for this domain:
# echo '192.168.0.1' >/etc/courier/ipout.example.com
This sets this IP address for all outgoing messages with a “@example.com” authenticated
client. It's important to note the following limitations:
• The Courier authentication library (see installation instructions) must be configured
with accounts and mailboxes that follow the “user@domain” format.
• Not all configuration settings can be customized in a setting.domain. The trivial
example would be the ESMTP server banner. The mail server emits the banner before it's
ready to receive the first message, so no return address-based customization is
possible, of course, to select an ESMTP server banner. Additionally, the “me”
configuration setting gets set before the return address is received, so the contents
of a domain-specific “me” may not be in effect in all contexts.
• Anyone can use any return address they wish. Some mitigation is possible, of course,
using measures such as SPF, but it would be mistake to believe that this is much more
than just eye candy.
• Both an IP address and domain-based “vhost”s are allowed. An IP address-based vhost
takes precedence.
BUGS
Flushing a single message will not work if the message queue is backed up. When that
happens, your only available option is to flush the entire queue.
courier start fails if the Courier mail server has detected a fatal operational error. In
this situation the top-level courierd daemon sleeps for a minute, before automatically
restarting. During this sleep interval courier stop does not work.
SEE ALSO
cancelmsg(1)[12], maildirmake(1)[10], maildrop(1)[6], preline(1)[15], sendmail(1)[16],
testmxlookup(1)[17], dot-courier(5)[4], authlib(7)[18], courierfax(8)[7],
courierfilter(8)[5], filterctl(8)[5], courierldapaliasd(8)[9], courierpop3d(8)[19],
courierpop3d(8)[19], couriertcpd(8)[14], courieruucp(8)[13], esmtpd(8)[20], imapd(8)[21],
localmailfilter(7)[2], mailq(1)[1], makeacceptmailfor(8)[22], makealiases(8)[23],
makehosteddomains(8)[8], makepercentrelay(8)[24], makesmtpaccess(8)[3], makeuserdb(8)[25],
pw2userdb(8)[25], mkdhparams(8)[26], mkesmtpdcert(8)[27], mkimapdcert(8)[28],
pop3d(8)[29], submit(8)[30], userdb(8)[31].
AUTHOR
Sam Varshavchik
Author
NOTES
1. mailq(1)
http://www.courier-mta.org/mailq.html
2. localmailfilter(7)
http://www.courier-mta.org/localmailfilter.html
3. makesmtpaccess(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/makesmtpaccess.html
4. dot-courier(5)
http://www.courier-mta.org/dot-courier.html
5.
courierfilter(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/courierfilter.html
6.
maildrop(1)
http://www.courier-mta.org/maildrop.html
7. courierfax(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/courierfax.html
8. makehosteddomains(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/makehosteddomains.html
9. courierldapaliasd(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/courierldapaliasd.html
10. maildirmake(1)
http://www.courier-mta.org/maildirmake.html
11. maildropfilter(6)
http://www.courier-mta.org/maildropfilter.html
12. cancelmsg(1)
http://www.courier-mta.org/cancelmsg.html
13. courieruucp(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/courieruucp.html
14. couriertcpd(1)
http://www.courier-mta.org/couriertcpd.html
15.
preline(1)
http://www.courier-mta.org/preline.html
16.
sendmail(1)
http://www.courier-mta.org/sendmail.html
17.
testmxlookup(1)
http://www.courier-mta.org/testmxlookup.html
18.
authlib(7)
http://www.courier-mta.org/authlib.html
19.
courierpop3d(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/courierpop3d.html
20.
esmtpd(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/esmtpd.html
21.
imapd(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/imapd.html
22.
makeacceptmailfor(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/makeacceptmailfor.html
23.
makealiases(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/makealiases.html
24.
makepercentrelay(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/makepercentrelay.html
25.
makeuserdb(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/makeuserdb.html
26.
mkdhparams(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/mkdhparams.html
27.
mkesmtpdcert(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/mkesmtpdcert.html
28.
mkimapdcert(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/mkimapdcert.html
29.
pop3d(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/pop3d.html
30.
submit(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/submit.html
31.
userdb(8)
http://www.courier-mta.org/userdb.html