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12 Working with the Mail Service
In this chapter you will find commands you can use to
manage the mail service.
Mac OS X Server provides a full complement of tools for setting up and managing
email service for your users. You can use the commands described in this chapter to
control the individual components that make up the mail service.
Understanding the Mail Service
The Mail service in Mac OS X Server consists of three components, all based on open
standards with full support for Internet mail protocols:
 Postfix, the SMTP mail transfer agent
 Cyrus, which supports IMAP and POP
 Mailman, which provides mailing list management features
Postfix Agent
Mac OS X Server uses Postfix as its SMTP mail transfer agent. Postfix is easy to
administer. Its basic configuration can be managed through Server Admin, and
therefore, it does not rely on editing the configuration file /etc/postfix/main.cf.
Postfix uses multiple layers of defense to protect the server computer against intruders.
There is no direct path from the network to the security-sensitive local delivery tools.
Postfix does not trust the contents of its own queue files, or the contents of its own IPC
messages. Postfix filters sender-provided information before exporting it via
environment variables. Nearly every Postfix application can run with fixed low
privileges and no ability to change ID, run as root, or run as any other user.
Postfix uses the configuration file main.cf in /etc/postfix. Whenever Server Admin
modifies Postfix settings, it overwrites the main.cf file. If you want to make a manual
change to the configuration file of Postfix, be aware that Server Admin will overwrite
your changes the next time you use it to modify the mail service configuration.