CentOS 7 Postfix relay (gmail)

How to send emails trough a smart relay that uses SASL and TLS

I used:

• CentOS Linux release 7.3.1611
• postfix-2.10.1-6.el7.x86_64

The rpm comes from CentOS yum Base.

The setup

File: /etc/postfix/main.cf

This is the main configuration for postfix in regards to how you would like to behave.

smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name
biff = no
append_dot_mydomain = no
readme_directory = no
smtpd_tls_session_cache_timeout=3600s
tls_random_source=dev:/dev/urandom
smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache
smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_sasl_tls_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl/password
smtp_use_tls = yes
smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.trust.crt
smtp_tls_loglevel = 1
smtp_tls_security_level = encrypt
smtpd_relay_restrictions = permit_mynetworks permit_sasl_authenticated defer_unauth_destination
myhostname = ${OPTIONAL_HOSTNAME}
alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases
alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases
myorigin = /etc/mailname
mydestination = $myhostname localhost.$mydomain
relayhost = [${mail.RELAY}]:587
mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8
mailbox_size_limit = 0
recipient_delimiter = +
inet_interfaces = localhost
inet_protocols = ipv4

# comment these two when done
debug_peer_list = ${mail.RELAY}
debug_peer_level = 3

File: /etc/postfix/sasl/password

Write into the file the username and password that you use to authenticate.

[${mail.RELAY}]    ${user@domain}:${PASSWORD}  

Once you save the file you need to create the database, in this case it's hash

cd /etc/postfix/salsl && postmap password

At this point restart postfix

systemctl restart postfix

The problem

Since all that is configured is ok ... you would expect that now you can send email however ...

smtp_sasl_authenticate: mail.RELAY[IPV4]:587: SASL mechanisms PLAIN LOGIN
warning: SASL authentication failure: No worthy mechs found
...
send attr reason = SASL authentication failed; cannot authenticate to server mail.RELAY[IPV4]: no mechanism available 

The main problem is that the username and password works fine ... you can test by using telnet

# First compute the base64 encoded string. \0 is a null terminated string
printf '${user@domain}\0${user@domain}\0${PASSWORD}' | base64

# telnet to the smtp relay

telnet ${mail.RELAY}
EHLO ${OPTIONAL_HOSTNAME}
250-server.example.com
250-PIPELINING
250-SIZE 10240000
250-ETRN
250-AUTH DIGEST-MD5 PLAIN CRAM-MD5
250 8BITMIME
AUTH PLAIN ${COMPUTED_STRING_FROM_PRINTF}
235 Authentication successful

So what is not working ?! Based on the errors we've seen postfix complains that there is no worthy mechs ... that may lead you to read more into the source code. Bottom line since Postfix uses Cyrus SASL library as per Postfix documentation you actually need to install cyrus-sasl-lib

yum install -y  cyrus-sasl cyrus-sasl-lib cyrus-sasl-plain

# restart postfix

systemctl restart postfix 

At this point if you keep the debug on you will see

....
smtp_sasl_authenticate: ${mail.RELAY}[${IPV4}]:587: SASL mechanisms PLAIN LOGIN
xsasl_cyrus_client_get_user: ${user@domain}
xsasl_cyrus_client_get_passwd: ${PASSWORD}
...
... 235 2.7.0 Authentication successful
 

Note: all symbols ${} should be replace with your relevant information. The value of myhostname is optional into /etc/postfix/main.cf if not present postfix uses your hostname.