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+---
+title: "Sending and Receiving Email"
+tags: ["mail"]
+date: 2022-12-01
+---
+
+The first step to setting up an email server is having an SMTP server.
+SMTP sends and receives email. Whether we want a full email server or
+just the ability to send automated email by script, we will need SMTP,
+and Postfix is the standard SMTP server.
+
+Here let\'s set a server up. Note that our goal is to be able to send
+emails from our server. If you want a full email server, this is the
+first step, and we will address the rest later.
+
+## Before beginning!
+
+Whatever VPS ([Vultr](https://www.vultr.com/?ref=8384069-6G) or
+[Frantech](https://my.frantech.ca/aff.php?aff=3886)) or IPS you are
+using, it is a very common policy to **automatically block all email
+ports by default**. VPS providers do this to prevent spammers from using
+their services.
+
+If you want to start an email server, therefore, go to your VPS\'s site
+and open a ticket or make a request to open up email ports, notably port `25`. This is a
+simple process that requires nothing too special. One of the wagies at
+your VPS will kindly do the needful and open your ports for you. Note
+that this is not the same as unblocking a port with [ufw](/../ufw),
+which still needs to be done for SMTP to work.
+
+    ufw allow 25,587 proto tcp
+
+## Installation
+
+First, we install Postfix and also `mailutils`, which comes with some
+mail programs we will use.
+
+    apt install -y mailutils postfix
+
+Installing Postfix for the first time will give us some graphical
+options.
+
+{{< img alt="SMTP Postfix internet site choice" src="/pix/smtp-01.png" link="/pix/smtp-01.png" >}}
+
+When asked for a \"mail name\", give your full domain name from which
+you would like mail to come and go, e.g. **example.org** or
+**chad.thesiah.xyz**
+
+{{< img alt="SMTP Postfix fully qualified domain name" src="/pix/smtp-02.png" link="/pix/smtp-02.png" >}}
+
+## Test the email
+
+That is actually all you need to have set up to have a barebones,
+send-only email server. We can test our server by running a `mail`
+command like that below.
+
+    echo "Hi there.
+
+    This is the text." | mail -s "Email from the server" your@emailaddress.com
+
+This type of command is sufficient enough for your server to send mail.
+Note that we use the `-s` option to specify the email\'s subject while
+we pipe the email content into the `mail` command via standard input. In
+this example I use a quoted multiline email as an example.
+
+## Do you see your message?
+
+If you sent the above test message to an account on Gmail or another
+major email provider, there is **very high** chance of the message you
+sent above being marked as spam or not appearing at all!
+
+Don\'t worry, we\'ll take care of that in the next two articles where we
+set up rDNS with your VPS provider and various other DNS
+records to validate the emails you send.