Controlling sender domain in Postfix/Zimbra 5

A client has asked that mail through his Zimbra MTA only be allowed from or to valid domains within their organization. This is particularly applicable to Zimbra as Zimbra will only archive mail if it’s from or to a domain for which it is authoritative. The idea is to archive all mail through their Zimbra environment.. If it is not one of their domains, refuse it.

If this were my organization it would look like this:
mail from user@morganjones.org to any domain would work
mail from user@1038east.com to any domain would work
mail from any domain to user@morganjones.org would work
mail from any domain to user@1038east.com would work
of course mail from and to user@morganjones.org or 1038east.com will work
all other mail will be considered relaying.

One thing we did not do that I might want to do is force authentication. The problem with this configuration is it does open up to spamming as it only validates from or to domain.

This is really a discussion about Postfix configuration but I did the work in Zimbra so I might as well add the additional steps to configure it in Zimbra.. These instructions will be applicable to straight Postfix or Zimbra.

You’ll want to do all the work as the zimbra user:
Run the zmprov command for each of your mtas.


# su - zimbra

$ zmprov ms mta01.morganjones.org zimbraMtaMyNetworks 127.0.0.0/8

$ vi /opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/main.cf
smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = no
# if you want enable sending to domains for which your environment is not
#   authoritative this is also handy for testing in your dev environment
#   that is only authoritative for a dev domain
relay_domains = 1038east.com, morganjones.org

You also want to modify smtpd_recipient_restrictions but in Zimbra you must modify that with in the zimbra configuration:


$ vi /opt/zimbra/conf/postfix_recipient_restrictions.cf
# remove permit_sasl_authenticated
check_sender_access hash:/opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/access

$ vi /opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/access
1038eaast.com OK
morganjones.org OK

$ zmmtactl reload

You might want to check that /opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/main.cf now contains this:


smtpd_recipient_restrictions = reject_non_fqdn_recipient,
check_sender_access
hash:/opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/access, permit_mynetworks,
reject_unauth_destination, reject_unlisted_recipient,
reject_invalid_hostname, reject_non_fqdn_sender, permit

You should now be set.

It’s worth mentioning: check_sender_access will only check and allow the sender domain. if you don’t set relay_domains the recipient domain is allowed because your environment is the final destination for that/those domain(s). As noted above you can set relay_domains above if you want to allow relaying to domains for which this environment is not the final destination.

This entry was posted in linux, Messaging, Zimbra on by .

About morgan

Morgan is a freelance IT consultant living in Philadelphia. He lives with his girlfriend in an old house in Fishtown that they may never finish renovating. His focus is enterprise Messaging (think email) and Directory. Many of his customers are education, school districts and Universities. He also gets involved with most aspects of enterprise Linux and UNIX (mostly Solaris) administration, Perl, hopefully Ruby, PHP, some Java and C programming. He holds a romantic attachment to software development though he spends most of his time making software work rather than making software. He rides motorcycles both on and off the track, reads literature with vague thoughts of giving up IT to teach English literature.

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