Mail Services Questions

mferry

• April 03, 2015 17:41

Folks, need a little direction on what each one is doing.... Here is my understanding.... 1 - Dovecot is running for POP3/IMAP services 2 - EXIM is running as SMTP service. Where does sendmail come in to this? Where does postfix come in to this ? The reason why I am asking and getting a better understanding is because I have a script that needs to send emails but I would like to just drop these files in the 'pickup' or 'maildrop/queue' folder. I have no problem getting the file formatted correctly, but I am hitting dead ends on where to put it. I have seen reference to /var/spool/mqueue --- but this doesn't exist on my WHM setup. Also reference to /var/spool/postfix/maildrop.... this doesn't exist either. Need little direction on how to locate a folder that the SMTP service watches to send mail. I looked at exim.conf and other configurations, but no luck in finding any solid leads. Thanks for the help. Matt

• 

  cPanelPeter cPanel Staff

  • April 04, 2015 00:39

  Hi Matt, You're correct. Dovecot is for POP3 and IMAP. Exim is an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) and is used for sending. Sendmail and Postfix are also MTA's. They are not installed by default on cPanel/WHM servers. The Exim queue is in /var/spool/exim/input directory. It's not really a good idea to "drop" your messages that you want to send into that folder because they do have to have a specific message ID (generated by Exim).

  0
• 

  mferry

  • April 04, 2015 00:41

  is there something I can add on that would have a "good" drop folder?

  0
• 

  cPanelMichael

  • April 08, 2015 18:33

  Hello, Are there any reasons you need to queue your email for delivery instead of sending it out right away? It's likely a better idea to simply stagger the emails through the script you are using to send email if that's something you need to do. Thank you.

  0
• 

  mferry

  • April 08, 2015 18:47

  The actually emails are being generated by an backend application server. Each customer on the application server will have an hosting account on a whm/cpanel server. We have kinda have moved to SMTP authentication to send these messages because that way the SMTP traffic can be tracked per account. The problem I see now is cPanel password changes..... they change their password in cPanel... the application server needs to query via an API to get the current password to send mail as that customer/account. Is there an API call for current password?

  0
• 

  cPanelMichael

  • April 10, 2015 13:27

  The problem I see now is cPanel password changes..... they change their password in cPanel... the application server needs to query via an API to get the current password to send mail as that customer/account.

  
  The passwords are encrypted, but the following document explains API authentication in general: You will need to update this method to use the Passwd event hook. Thank you.

  0

Please sign in to leave a comment.