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Can't Send Emails Using Both Postfix & Sendmail On Debian-9-64bit Fresh Droplet

Posted on April 8, 2018

There’s a problem with either the DigitalOcean firewalls or something similar. Can’t send emails using both Postfix and Sendmail. I’ve put no firewalls in place. All ports open, but still can’t send. Please fix ASAP.

Steps to reproduce the case:

  1. Create a Debian-9-64bit 1GB droplet.
  2. Update system using apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
  3. Now install Postfix using apt-get install postfix postfix-mysql postfix-doc openssl getmail4 rkhunter binutils dovecot-imapd dovecot-pop3d dovecot-mysql dovecot-sieve dovecot-lmtpd mailutils
  4. Send a test mail, echo “This is the body of the email” | mail -s “This is the subject line” your_email_address Now, the mail never gets sent. Please look into this issue.


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When you attempt to send an email by following these steps, what if anything is recorded in your postfix log files?

Hello there,

It is possible that port 25 is closed. This is something DigitalOcean has been doing to reduce spam on their network. Please do not think that they are accusing you of sending spam, it is more that they simply cannot accurately determine who is going to send it.

Stopping spam is a constant fight, so DigitalOcean has implemented some restrictions on newer accounts. To qualify for the ability to send out emails, DigitalOcean requires accounts to wait 60 days before they can look into removing the restriction. Once your account has reached 60 days of stable use, please do reach back out to the DigitalOcean support team so they can look into this for you.

In the meantime, you could use port 587 instead.

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