Email Server for Nginx (centminmod)

[Reeve of Shinra]

I am trying out a virtual server on DigitalOcean and installed Nginx via centminmod.

1) I would like to add an email server to handle the transactional emails from xenforo (i.e. user confirmation and password resets). Any recommendations and most importantly instructions?

2) Is there an easy way to see how many emails my xenforo forum is currently sending out a month?

 

[TPerry]

I am trying out a virtual server on DigitalOcean and installed Nginx via centminmod.

1) I would like to add an email server to handle the transactional emails from xenforo (i.e. user confirmation and password resets). Any recommendations and most importantly instructions?

2) Is there an easy way to see how many emails my xenforo forum is currently sending out a month?

I like Postfix myself. Easy enough to configure and handles sending & receiving nicely.
You could always grab the add-on that allows you to use mandrill (http://xenforo.com/community/resources/bd-mails.2313/) and the free account handles quite a few.
Setup is pretty easy, just be sure you have SPF/DKIM entries in your DNS.

 

[dbembibre]

I install recently in one of my servers a postfix null client (a server that only send emails, like xenforo do) only take five minutes to work.
In my case, install postfix from yum and copy a configuration from http://www.postfix.org/STANDARD_CONFIGURATION_README.html#null_client

 

[TPerry]

I install recently in one of my servers a postfix null client (a server that only send emails, like xenforo do) only take five minutes to work.
In my case, install postfix from yum and copy a configuration from http://www.postfix.org/STANDARD_CONFIGURATION_README.html#null_client

DKIM will take a little longer to set up also.

 

[SneakyDave]

Thanks for this info. One of the things that's still incomplete on my servers

 

[Floren]

Related to mailing system, I have it set this way on my online server:
1. All emails sent from server are managed by Postfix.
2. All email accounts are managed by Google Apps.

Is there an easy way to see how many emails my xenforo forum is currently sending out a month?

# cat /etc/*release
CentOS release 6.4 (Final)
# yum install postfix-perl-scripts
# man pflogsumm

Output example for one day, on one of my development servers:

# pflogsumm -d today /var/log/maillog
Postfix log summaries for Oct 29

Grand Totals
------------
messages

      0   received
      1   delivered
      0   forwarded
      0   deferred
      0   bounced
      0   rejected (0%)
      0   reject warnings
      0   held
      0   discarded (0%)

      0   bytes received
      0   bytes delivered
      0   senders
      0   sending hosts/domains
      1   recipients
      1   recipient hosts/domains


Per-Hour Traffic Summary
    time          received  delivered   deferred    bounced     rejected
    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    0000-0100           0          0          0          0          0
    0100-0200           0          0          0          0          0
    0200-0300           0          0          0          0          0
    0300-0400           0          1          0          0          0
    0400-0500           0          0          0          0          0
    0500-0600           0          0          0          0          0
    0600-0700           0          0          0          0          0
    0700-0800           0          0          0          0          0
    0800-0900           0          0          0          0          0
    0900-1000           0          0          0          0          0
    1000-1100           0          0          0          0          0
    1100-1200           0          0          0          0          0
    1200-1300           0          0          0          0          0
    1300-1400           0          0          0          0          0
    1400-1500           0          0          0          0          0
    1500-1600           0          0          0          0          0
    1600-1700           0          0          0          0          0
    1700-1800           0          0          0          0          0
    1800-1900           0          0          0          0          0
    1900-2000           0          0          0          0          0
    2000-2100           0          0          0          0          0
    2100-2200           0          0          0          0          0
    2200-2300           0          0          0          0          0
    2300-2400           0          0          0          0          0

Host/Domain Summary: Message Delivery
sent cnt  bytes   defers   avg dly max dly host/domain
-------- -------  -------  ------- ------- -----------
      1        0        0     1.0 s    1.0 s  axivo.com

Host/Domain Summary: Messages Received
msg cnt   bytes   host/domain
-------- -------  -----------

Senders by message count: none

Recipients by message count
---------------------------
      1   apollo@axivo.com

Senders by message size: none

Recipients by message size
--------------------------
      0   apollo@axivo.com

Messages with no size data
--------------------------
EA6AA120274  apollo@axivo.com

message deferral detail: none

message bounce detail (by relay): none

message reject detail: none

message reject warning detail: none

message hold detail: none

message discard detail: none

smtp delivery failures: none

Warnings: none

Fatal Errors: none

Panics: none

Master daemon messages: none

If you want to run a report for multiple days, simply use something like:

# pflogsumm /var/log/maillog*

Or whatever pleases you, the data being pulled from specific logs. Obviously, you will need to change the maillog rotation, if you plan to use 30 days reports. By default only the last 7 days logs are stored (at least that is how I have it set on all my machines). Personally, I do 1 day reports and save them to a file with a cron. Quick example:

# pflogsumm -d today /var/log/maillog > /tmp/pflogsumm.`date +%m-%d-%y`

You can also have it emailed daily, is up to you.