Archiving Email from Postfix into MailVault
So you run Postfix and want to have a central backup of all your email. With MailVault, it’s easy.
Let’s assume the following setup:
- Company domain is example.com
- Postfix is running on one server
- MailVault is running on another server
There are two basic approaches to archiving all email from Postfix into MailVault:
- Postfix stores a copy of all email into a mailbox and MailVault picks it up periodically (over say POP3), or
- Postfix forwards a copy of all email (via SMTP) to MailVault
The former is recommended and outlined below.
Method: Postfix stores, MailVault retrieves.
1. Create mailbox
Create a mailbox with email-id as archive@example.com and ensure that it is available over POP3. MailVault will periodically (default is every 10 minutes) retrieve and delete email from this mailbox.
2. Configure Postfix
Assume the Postfix configuration files are in /etc/postfix.
cd /etc/postfix
Edit main.cf – seach for always_bcc and include the following line:
always_bcc = archive@example.com
Save main.cf and reload Postfix
postfix reload
The archive@example.com email id will now start receiving a copy of each message that is received by the Postfix mail system.
Note:
- If mail to the BCC address bounces it will be returned to the sender.
- Automatic BCC recipients are produced only for new mail. To avoid mailer loops, automatic BCC recipients are not generated after Postfix forwards mail internally, or after Postfix generates mail itself.
3. Configure MailVault
Now login to MailVault and add a POP3 mail source, which will retrieve email from the archive@example.com mailbox.
Voila! You now have all your email from Postfix being backed up and archived into MailVault.
