Mails are really critical for any web based application. And, what if you do not want to maintain a mail server ?

Luckily, Linode server support email forwarding. It simply sends mail from Linode server to another existing email address.

At Bobcares, we often get requests to set up email forwarding in Linode servers as part of our Managed Cloud Services.

Today, we’ll see how our Dedicated Engineers setup Linode email forwarding and fix common errors with it.

How email forwarding helps?

First of all, let’s see the benefits of email forwarding.

1. Maintenance free

Managing a mail server in Linode involves considerable time and effort. For Linode owners that do not have enough expertise, email forwarding is a feasible option. Here, all the mails from the Linode will be simply forwarded to the mail server.

2. Saves Disk space

Similarly, email forwarding saves disk space. Here, there will not be any mail boxes on the Linode server. All mails will be stored at the mail server. Thus, it saves considerable mailbox disk space too.

Best ways for Linode Email forwarding

Ok. We just saw the benefits of Linode email forwarding.

But, what’s the best way to do it?

The answer depends on your exact requirement and the volume of mails that you are expecting to your domains. Let’s check the top two methods that our Dedicated Engineers recommends to Linode owners.

1. Modifying MX entry

Perhaps the easiest solution for Linode email forwarding would be to set up remote mail exchanger(MX) for the domain. This requires changes in the DNS records of the domain. And, any mail sent to the domain will be further handled by this mail server. This requires an account at the mail server provider.

For example, when a customer wanted his mails to be handled by Google MX, our Dedicated Engineers modified the MX record for the domain at Linode DNS Manager. We set the MX as Google’s mail servers. As a result, all mails were routed to Gmail.

2. Postfix with mail forwarding

Likewise, another way for mail forwarding in Linode is to set up mail server and simply configure forwarding of mails.

For example in Postfix mail server, our Dedicated Engineers make couple of changes in the Postfix configuration file. This includes adding email aliases in the file /etc/postfix/virtual

For Postfix to understand the domains for which it should accept mail, we add them to the virtualaliasdomains file. Afterwards, we run these commands to make Postfix pick up the new configuration.

sudo postmap /etc/postfix/virtual
sudo /etc/init.d/postfix reload

Similarly in Exim mail server, we need to tell exim what domains to accept mail for, and then modify /etc/aliases file to add the forwarding email addresses.

Common usability issues in Linode email forwarding and their fixes

Although email forwarding can be set up easily, we often see Linode customers reporting some real time problems. Let’s have a look at them now.

Low server IP reputation

Linode email forwarding can often complain that your server has low IP reputation. Mails sent from servers with low reputation can be blocked. This typically happens as the mail headers show that the mails are simply forwarded. Again, mail forwarding breaks SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record. As a result, the receiving server may mark the message as not safe.

Luckily, there are ways to workaround this low reputation problem. When Linode customers report this problem, we do the following things to fix server reputation.

1. Set up SRS (Sender rewriting scheme) along with SPF that helps mail server to rewrite the sender address.
2. Add proper DKIM records for the mail domain
3. Also set up proper reverse DNS (PTR) records for both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses in Linode.

2. Huge amount of Spam

Additionally Linode email forwarding can result in huge amount of spam mails at the recipient email address. For example, when you set mail forwarding to a gmail address, Linode server will simply send that mail to gmail server. There is not spam check happening at the Linode server. Over a period of time, there will be an increase in the spam mail count and google server will start blocking mails.

To fix this, our Dedicated Engineers modify the Postfix rules to reject hosts which do not reveal their identity or are listed in known black lists. Thus, it helps to cut down spam mails.

[Need help in email forwarding on your Linode server ? Our Cloud Engineers can help you.]

Conclusion

In short, to set up email forwarding in Linode we just need to add custom MX record for the domain or tweak the mail server for forwarding mails. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers set up mail forwarding and fix usability problems like spamming, low IP reputation, etc.