Le mer. 18 févr. 2026 à 20:47, Bill Cole via Postfix-users <
[email protected]> a écrit :

> On 2026-02-18 at 13:00:05 UTC-0500 (Wed, 18 Feb 2026 19:00:05 +0100)
> Daniel Azuelos via Postfix-users <[email protected]>
> is rumored to have said:
>
[...]

> Apple has done multiple things to make that infeasible and while you can
> fight them, you cannot win. Modern Macs are *unfit* for server duty
> using macOS.
>
[...]
I feel the experience is speaking. How righteous you are.
BTW I am not an Αpple fanboy, I worked on more than 20
≠ Unixes ( CentOS, Kali Linux, FreeBSD… ).
My last server an iMac was chooesn because it was able to
manage my printer and a nice personal firewall built on PF.

But I have some tips anyway...
>
I appreciate your effort to provide help for the golden jail.

> After a complete verification of /etc/postfix/main.cf &
> > /etc/postfix/master.cf
>
> Verified how??? They can be syntactically correct but functionally
> broken.
>
[...]
A basic syntactic check + postconf -d xxx and checking that the value
was right, which was not always the case ( ex. myhostname ).

> See
>
> https://www.postfix.org/DEBUG_README.html#:~:text=help.-,reporting%20problems%20to%20postfix%[email protected]
> for the information we need to help you.
>
> > and rewriting
> >         /System/Library/com.apple.postfix.master.plist
> >         ( which is on a RO filesystem )
>
> Actually /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.postfix.master.plist
>

You are right, I typed it from memory and too fast.


> You need to *remove* that if you want to run a real mail server. That
> means reboot to Recovery Mode, disable SIP, remove the .plist, re-enable
> SIP, reboot.
>

I did it:
# csrutil status
System Integrity Protection status: disabled.
#

> on
> >         /Library/com.apple.postfix.master.plist
> >         ( which is on a RW filesystem )
>
> Again, missing a /LaunchDaemons/ directory level.
>

Yes same typing error.
To be clearer, I disabled the
    /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.postfix.master.plist
created an appropriate
    /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.postfix.master.plist

Note that you also need to write something very *different* from Apple's
> plist and .cf files, which implement an on-demand null client without a
> smarthost.
>
[...]

> I'm surprised that it works at all, if you didn't remove the System
> launchctl plist and write a *correct* one, things will break.
>

I disabled the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons…:
    # launchctl unload
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.postfix.master.plist
    # launchctl unload
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.postfix.newaliases.plist

and I removed the /etc/postfix/(main,master).cf from Αpple
to start from my own ones which were coming from a previous version of
Postfix 2.11.0.

> But I get a lot of errors shown with:
> >         postqueue -p
> > like:
> > B68F71C1C2A   256170 Tue Feb 17 14:05:38  [email protected]
> >                                                 (unknown mail
> > transport
> > error)
> >                                          [email protected]
>
> Since you are using Apple's customized Postfix, that could mean
> anything...
>
> Check your main.cf for directives related to transports, e.g.
> smtp_transport_maps. Any transport used has to also have an entry in
> master.cf.
>
> > And the worst of this problem is that postfix is not logging anything
> > in
> >         /var/log/mail.log
> > which was my best source of help for 15 years managing Postfix.
>
> Welcome to modern macOS.
>
[...]
I must admit I hate their concept of golden jail.

I see you are trusting Apple's in-system documentation, i.e. 'man'
> pages. They lie.

[...]
I discovered this bad habit of lie 15 years ago on Yosemite :[.

Thank you Bill for your experience sharing.
You gave me 2 exit pathes of hope:
- install the last version of Postfix,
- understand how to make the new Αpple religion of logging
  to work as on any normal Unix.

Glad to meet you.
-- 
dan
_______________________________________________
Postfix-users mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]

Reply via email to