Testing Zimbra email routing

Question

I am an experienced Exim user and just recently testing Zimbra Open Source, and I am loving it already.

However, I am used to this command whenever I wanted to test email routing in the email server, whether I am testing for the routing of local users, local email addresses and external email addresses:

root@localhost# exim -bt alias@localdomain.com
user@thishost.com
    <-- alias@localdomain.com
  router = localuser, transport = local_delivery

root@localhost# exim -bt user@thishost.com
user@thishost.com
  router = localuser, transport = local_delivery

root@localhost# exim -bt user@remotehost.com
  router = lookuphost, transport = remote_smtp
  host mail.remotehost.com [1.2.3.4] MX=0

Got the above cheatsheet years ago from http://bradthemad.org/tech/notes/exim_cheatsheet.php.

How can I do this with Zimbra/Postfix? I am searching everywhere on how to do this, but couldn't found any.

Thanks!

Micha Kersloot · Answer 1 · 2016-05-31T07:58:20.953

1

Zimbra uses postfix for delivering the mail to external addresses. So you can use a lot of the commands on http://www.postfix.org/DEBUG_README.html

For example. Log in as the zimbra user and the command to give you a delivery report on a specific destination would be:

sendmail -bv micha@kovoks.nl

The result will be sent to the zimbra user, so you need to have the zimbra@ mail address configured in your system, for example as an alias on your own account.

edited May 31 '16 at 07:58

answered May 30 '16 at 13:08

Micha Kersloot

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I tried it, however it doesn't work with my zimbra server - `sendmail: fatal: unsupported: -bt` – James A May 30 '16 at 16:22
Looks like `sendmail -bt` only works for [original sendmail program](http://linux.die.net/man/8/sendmail.sendmail), not specific sendmail provided by postfix. – masegaloeh May 30 '16 at 19:28
My mistake, should be sendmail -bv – Micha Kersloot May 31 '16 at 07:58

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 30 '16 at 19:26

Try this command

/usr/sbin/sendmail -bv address.

sendmail binary from postfix has special options -bv

-bv    Do not collect or deliver a  message.  Instead,  send  an  email
       report  after  verifying each recipient address.  This is useful
       for testing address rewriting and routing configurations.

This command also can be found in postfix documentation:

Excerpt from the page

Postfix version 2.1 and later can produce mail delivery reports for debugging purposes. These reports not only show sender/recipient addresses after address rewriting and alias expansion or forwarding, they also show information about delivery to mailbox, delivery to non-Postfix command, responses from remote SMTP servers, and so on.

Unlike utility from exim which give result in the stdout, postfix will send the report to user who invoke above command. Also zimbra will place sendmail binary in its unusual directory, so you must invoke it by issuing the full path command.

/opt/zimbra/postfix/sbin/sendmail -bv address

This works great, however, since I can't receive local emails, I am just checking the result in `/var/log/maillog`. Exim's way is much cleaner, but this command works well. Thanks! — James A, May 30 '16 at 21:06
You can create two symlinks on your system to enable local mail: `ln -s /opt/zimbra/postfix/sbin/sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail` and `ln -s /opt/zimbra/postfix/sbin/sendmail /usr/lib/sendmail` — Micha Kersloot, Jun 01 '16 at 12:48

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 29 '16 at 15:42

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you can use telnet or sendmail commands from the zimbra user and keep checking the log output (/var/log/mail.log).

edited May 29 '16 at 15:42

dawud

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answered May 29 '16 at 13:19

Carlos Mario Mora Restrepo

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Okay so I assume there's no faster way to do this, just like how I can do it in Exim? Without actually sending an email to the intended recipients? I prefer the Exim way because it doesn't actually sends the email, and I can debug the routing issues without the destination email noticing anything. – James A May 29 '16 at 13:49

Testing Zimbra email routing

3 Answers3