Testing it

You should now have a system which can process mail so it's time to check that it works. At this point you're trying to make sure that the FreeBSD will accept email on port 25 and then deliver it to the correct mail server.

The first check you can make is just using telnet to connect to the server; type:

telnet localhost 25

and you should get a response from Postfix. Type quit if this works because you can now move on. I used Outlook Express on a Windows PC for the rest of the testing; I don't normally use this so if I mess things up it won't affect my normal mail! Set up an account and make sure that the SMTP server is set to point directly to your FreeBSD machine. The POP3 details are unimportant – you can point it to the same server and put anything in the username and password boxes because you're not going to use them.

Now use that account to try and send yourself an email. In a few seconds that email should arrive in your normal mail client. If it does then you can be confident that the basics of your server are properly configured. If it doesn't then check that postfix is running (ps -ax | grep “postfix”) and check that you can resolve names (nslookup -q=mx cnwl.ac.uk – make sure you put your own domain name!)