> On Sep 29, 2016, at 1:32 AM, Bill Cole
> <postfixlists-070...@billmail.scconsult.com> wrote:
>
> Nothing definitive, comprehensive, and usefully detailed because the world at
> large cannot tell you who you are. RFC5321 covers the technical details of
> SMTP well, but there are behaviors that it recommends which are widely
> unsupported and others it strongly discourages which are widely practiced.
A few hints:
* Change as few settings from their default values as possible,
and test small incremental changes en-route to a larger goal.
Avoid changing settings you don't understand. If you're making
a change take the time to read its documentation, test whether
it behaves how you expect under a variety of conditions...
* Take the time to learn to read and understand Postfix logs.
They are concise, carrying no useless baggage, and yet quite
detailed clear.
* Understand and make good use of "address classes".
* Understand what a Postfix "transport" is and how Postfix
selects the transport for a given message recipient.
* Understand what is meant by a message "envelope", headers,
MIME and nested headers and body.
* Understand the difference between SMTP submission and local
submission via sendmail(1). Ideally also the role of postdrop(1)
and pickup(8).
* Understand the difference between smtpd(8) and smtp(8), and when
various forms of address processing take place.
* Avoid doing address -> address rewriting via the legacy local
aliases(5) file. Use virtual(5) aliases instead for most address
rewriting. The aliases(5) is then just for lists with "owner-"
aliases or defined via ":include:" external files.
There's lots more of course, but the main idea is that the best practice
ultimately is as much as possible to know what you're doing, rather than
just cargo-cult some HOWTO without understanding why. If your needs are
sufficiently typical and simple, consider "mailinbox.org" which does most
of the work of figuring out the details for you. Or on a larger scale
perhaps Zimbra (which I assume also makes some effort to present Postfix
as a managed integrated component within their framework).
--
Viktor.
