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Configure Postfix to Relay to Amazon SES SMTP Server

Goal

Configure internal Postfix installation to relay email to Amazon SES SMTP server.

Steps

Make sure you have done everything that Amazon SES requires you before you're able to send email using Amazon SES. After that you can start to proceed steps below.

1. Install Postfix

$ sudo apt-get install postfix libsasl2-modules

2. Configure SMTP Credential

Make sure you already have Amazon SES username and secret key. Now we need to add the credential into postfix lookup table.

$ sudo cat > /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
[email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com]:587 YOUR_USERNAME:YOUR_SECRET_KEY
$ sudo chmod 0600 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

You may change the smtp server email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com according region where you setup the Amazon SES. Now update the postfix lookup table.

$ sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

Install Postfix on Ubuntu Server

Installing Postfix Mail Transport Agent (MTA) is very simple on ubuntu/debian.

# apt-get install postfix

Common configuration is internet site.

Listen Address

If the server only used by internal application for sending mail, then there is no need to bind to all interfaces. Just bind to loopback interface 127.0.0.1 as is more safe. The configuration located in /etc/postfix/main.cf.

# service postfix restart
# netstat -ntap | grep :25
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:25            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      8176/master