Introduction
Plesk is a hosting control panel that allows a system administrator to develop new websites, reseller accounts, DNS entries, email accounts, and more. Plesk provides a web-based interface, and it is compatible with both Windows and Linux based commercial hosting servers. Plesk helps to manage user’s accounts, applications, email, files, and more. Plesk is easy to use and has a cleaner graphical user interface (GUI) compared with other control panels. Plesk also offers three different editions – Web Admin, Web Host, and Web Pro edition. In order to know more about the Plesk Panel Prices and Editions, visit https://www.interserver.net/tips/kb/plesk-control-panel-prices-editions/.
Mail Baby is an intelligent email host that offers outbound filtering. All the emails are sent to the Mail Baby systems, and the content gets analyzed in the system. After the analysis, the email gets routed through an email zone based on the content and score of the email or gets bounced back as spam. Mail Baby also handles IP reputation and monitors all the IP addresses for blacklists. Mail Baby works along with the email providers through feedback loops and other abuse monitoring to ensure email delivery. Mail Baby is supported by cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk, and Microsoft Exchange. Mail Baby helps to create an SMTP username and password in minutes without the requirement of any complicated configurations or settings. In this tutorial, we will learn the steps to configure Mail Baby on a Plesk Linux system.
Features
Some of the features offered by Mail Baby are:
Spam Filtering
If an email account on the user’s server becomes compromised or someone sends a spam message, many major email providers will block the mail server. But Mail Baby will automatically prevent the delivery of spam messages. Mail Baby can understand bounce messages and detect viruses and spam. Mail Baby will notify the user of the findings, helping them change/update the settings and secure their environment even before any issue occurs.
Email Delivery
Mail Baby has developed a global network of high reputation mail servers to ensure that the user’s emails will always get delivered. Also, Mail Baby will deal with IP reputation making the process easy for the user.
Add Unlimited Servers
Mail Baby does not require any per server charges. Users can add as many servers as they want on a single account. Mail Baby understands that some servers just do not send out many emails. So, users can add as many servers as they need to their accounts.
Purchase
In order to purchase Mail Baby from InterServer, click on the below link:
https://my.interserver.net/buy_mail
Before Beginning:
It is recommended to check the mail server logs before configuring Mail Baby on a Plesk Linux server. The logs must be similar to the one shown below:
Aug 30 16:58:08 vps postfix/smtp[72028]: 20062A2F35: to=<[email protected]>, relay=mail.domain.com[88.197.190.124]:25, delay=48, delays=0.16/0.02/26/22, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 OK id=1mKoM3-0001nw-GU)
>> Note: By default, Plesk Linux servers use Postfix as the mail transfer agent (or mail server) to send and receive emails through the SMTPS and SMTP protocols.
Steps to Configure Mail Baby
In order to configure Mail Baby on a Plesk Linux server, follow the below steps:
Step 1: Password Map
After the Mail Baby purchase is successful, InterServer will provide the user with a username and password. This will be sent to the user’s registered email ID, and it also gets added to the client portal. In order to check the username and password from the client portal, follow the below steps:
- First, log in to the below URL and select the service.
https://my.interserver.net/view_mail_list
2. Under the Connection Information section, users can find the Mail Baby username and password.
Step 2: Create a Password File
In order to create a password file, follow the below steps:
- First, create a password file under the /etc/postfix directory.
- Open the password file using any of the text editors:
# vi /etc/postfix/password
- In that file, add the details in the following format:
relay.mailbaby.net username:password
For Example:
- After adding the details, save and exit the file.
Step 3: Set Permission for the Password File
Execute the following commands to set the required permissions for the password file:
# chown root:root /etc/postfix/password
#chmod 0600 /etc/postfix/password
#postmap hash:/etc/postfix/password
Step 4: Create X-Sender-id header
Create a file /etc/postfix/header_custom and add the following line:
/^Received: (.*Authenticated sender:)([^)]*)(.*)/i PREPEND X-Sender-id: $2
Step 5: Postfix Smarthost Authentication
- Open the Postfix configuration file using any of the text editors:
# vi /etc/postfix/main.cf - Append the following configurations to the main.cf file:
relayhost = relay.mailbaby.net
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/password
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtpd_sasl_authenticated_header = yes
smtp_tls_security_level = encrypt
smtp_header_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/header_custom
The parameters appended to the configuration files are:
| Parameter Value | Description |
| relayhost = relay.mailbaby.net | Relays all mail via relay.mailbaby.net mail service |
| smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes | This indicates Cyrus-SASL support for authentication of mail servers. |
| smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/password | Sets path to sasl_passwd. |
| smtp_sasl_security_options | When left empty, it uses the default. It allows Postfix to use anonymous and plain text authentication. |
| smtpd_sasl_authenticated_header = yes | Tells Postfix to log the authenticated user ID in the received header so that the user behavior and reputation are tracked. |
| smtp_tls_security_level = encrypt | (Optional) If there are issues connecting with this option, try disabling it. |
- After that, save and exit the file.
Step 6: Restart the Postfix Service
After making all the above changes, execute the following command to restart the Postfix service:
# /etc/init.d/postfix restart
Restarting postfix (via systemctl): [ OK ]
Confirmation
After the configuration, check the mail server logs to confirm the configuration:
Aug 30 17:15:40 vps postfix/smtp[72689]: 52937A2ED5: to=<[email protected]>, relay=relay.mailbaby.net[209.159.154.242]:25, delay=0.53, delays=0.12/0.01/0.15/0.25, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 Message queued as 17b98eaf71600037fc)
Conclusion
This tutorial presents the steps to configure Mail Baby on a Plesk Linux system. Hope this tutorial was helpful, and do reach out to us if you have any query or suggestions.
