TARSYS Pty Limited

How to configure Exim to send email using a Gmail account as a Smart Host. After following this guide, Exim should be able to send email out to the internet via your Google Gmail account.

1. Prepare Exim4 using dpkg

dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

Selections:

a) General type of mail configuration: mail sent by smarthost; received via SMTP or fetchmail

b) System mail name: localhost

c) Ip Addr to listen on: 127.0.0.1

d) Other destinations~: <blank>

e) Machines to Relay for: <blank>

f) ip address or hostname of the outgoing smarthost: smtp.gmail.com::587

g) Hide local mail name in outgoing mail: No

h) Keep number of DNS queries minimal: No

i) Delivery method for local mail: Maildir format in home directory

j) Split configuration into small files: Yes

2. As root, edit /etc/exim4/passwd.client and add the following.

Don’t forget to change emailaddress@gmail.com to your own email address and password to your own password:

gmail-smtp.l.google.com:emailaddress@gmail.com:password
*.google.com:emailaddress@gmail.com:password
smtp.gmail.com:emailaddress@gmail.com:password

Note: You are probably worried about having your password in this file – don’t worry, we’ll make sure the permissions are set correctly in the next step.

3. Set permissions on the /etc/exim4/passwd.client file

Type the following, as root, in the console:

chmod 640 /etc/exim4/passwd.client
chown root:Debian-exim /etc/exim4/passwd.client

4. Add/Edit the /etc/exim4/email-addresses file

In the console as root, add or edit the /etc/exim4/email-addresses file. Just add the following line (no others)

your-local-user-name@localhost:    your-gmail-email-address

And set permissions:

chmod 640 /etc/exim4/email-addresses

5. Edit the /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf file

It should look like the following:

dc_eximconfig_configtype='smarthost'
dc_other_hostnames=''
dc_local_interfaces='127.0.0.1'
dc_readhost=''
dc_relay_domains=''
dc_minimaldns='false'
dc_relay_nets=''
dc_smarthost='smtp.gmail.com::587'
CFILEMODE='644'
dc_use_split_config='true'
dc_hide_mailname='false'
dc_mailname_in_oh='true'
dc_localdelivery='maildir_home'

6. Restart Exim

/etc/init.d/exim4 restart

That should be it!