Adding e-mail accounts

In this recipe, we will learn how to add e-mail accounts to Postfix. The easiest way to add a new e-mail account to Postfix is to add a new user account on your server. Postfix will check for user accounts and deliver e-mails to respective users. We will create a virtual user setup so that we do not need to create user accounts for each e-mail user.

Getting ready

You will need access to a root account or an account with sudo privileges.

I assume that you have completed your basic Postfix setup and that it is working properly.

How to do it…

Follow these steps to add e-mail account:

1. Create a new user account:

   $ useradd -s /usr/bin/nologin -m vmail
   

2. Get the UID and GID for this account:

   $ grep vmail /etc/passwd
   vmail:x:1001:1001::/home/vmail:/usr/bin/nologin
   

   
3. Create a base directory layout for domains and users:

   $ sudo mkdir -p /home/vmail/example.org/bob
   $ sudo mkdir -p /home/vmail/example.net/alice
   

4. Allow only the user vmail to access these files:

   $ sudo chown -R vmail:vmail...