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I am setting up a VPS on linode but I can't seem to setup a mail sending program like sendmail so that I can send emails through PHP.

I am stuck at the very first step of changing the hostname. I changed the entries under /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts but when I even reboot the VPS, then hostname -f shows hostname: Name or service not known

What's wrong? And any good tutorial for setting things up?

I am using nginx, if that somehow matters in any case.

Content of /etc/hosts localhost mail.bankpo.in

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

Content of /etc/hostname


And which hostname returns /bin/hostname

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What did you put in /etc/hosts? –  Bart De Vos May 12 '11 at 12:21
What does it tell you when you do ´which hostname´ ? –  Matthieu May 12 '11 at 12:23
@TiZon @Matthieu I have added the info in the question, please take a look –  Ashfame May 12 '11 at 12:33
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1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Edit /etc/hosts like this:       mail.bankpo.in      mail localhost       mail.bankpo.in      mail

add this to /etc/resolv.conf

domain bankpo.in
search bankpo.in

Then, reboot and try with /bin/hostname --fqdn

To set-up email, this is what I would do:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y && sudo apt-get update -y
sudo reboot
sudo apt-get install postfix mailutils -y
sudo postconf -e "mydestination = mail.bankpo.in, bankpo.in, localhost.localdomain, localhost"
sudo postconf -e "mynetworks ="
sudo postconf -e "inet_interfaces = all"
sudo  /etc/init.d/postfix restart
share|improve this answer
@TiZon Thanks! That did it. Any pointers for a simple tutorial for setting things up so that I can send mail. Which one do you suggest out of sendmail and others? –  Ashfame May 12 '11 at 12:46
@Ashfame I have edited my answer with some installation-instructions. I would go with sendmail. –  Bart De Vos May 12 '11 at 12:53
@TiZon Thanks a lot so far! I think its almost ready. I managed to get to the same point using exim and your instructions (tried yours afterwards, after removing exim). If I send a test mail using echo "This is a test." | mail -s Testing someone@somedomain.com, I get the email, but if I use PHP mail function, it return boolean false. Do I need to make changes in some PHP config file too? Or that should be a different question possibly out of scope of serverfault? –  Ashfame May 12 '11 at 13:15
I think PHP uses sendmail, Can you send an email via sendmail? –  Bart De Vos May 12 '11 at 13:23
@TiZon Yeah! I can. I tried using the code on this page go4expert.com/forums/showthread.php?t=465 –  Ashfame May 12 '11 at 18:15
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