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I cannot sent mail by using Postfix (SMTP) on Ubuntu Server 11.04. So, there must be some errors, But where to see the error message?

sr_
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lovespring
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3 Answers3

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Have you already stumbled upon this comprehensive Postfix Debugging Howto? There's the following notice concerning logging:

Postfix logs all failed and successful deliveries to a logfile. The file is usually called /var/log/maillog or /var/log/mail; the exact pathname is defined in the /etc/syslog.conf file.

(syslog.conf specifies where the mail-facility logs get written to, it's rather self-explaining when you look at it.)

sr_
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  • I don't have this file, I'm using ubuntu server 11.0 – lovespring Oct 27 '11 at 14:44
  • No `/etc/syslog.conf`? Sorry, I don't know much about Ubuntu. Forget this then, how about `/var/log/mail` or similar? According to [this](https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/serverguide/C/postfix.html#postfix-logs), there should be a `/var/log/mail.err` log, I suppose. You'll find some Ubuntu-specific Postfix debugging hints on that page, too. – sr_ Oct 27 '11 at 14:51
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    /var/log/mail.err this is it! Are all unix log file puted in this /var/log dir? Is it a 'must be'? – lovespring Oct 27 '11 at 15:23
  • [For system logs this is mostly true](http://linux.die.net/man/7/hier), possibly varying for different distributions (and of course user-space programs, e.g. `~/.xsession-errors` on some distributions). – sr_ Oct 27 '11 at 18:12
  • On ubuntu, the syslogger is rsyslog. The configuration file is /etc/rsyslog.conf and in the /etc/rsyslog.d/ directory. In your case, /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf say 'mail.* -/var/log/mail.log' and 'mail.err /var/log/mail.err' – Dom Jun 22 '12 at 09:44
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log files for postfix can be 

/var/log/mail.log
/var/log/mail.err
/var/log/mail.info

and also you can grep logs for /var/log/syslog file.

jasonwryan
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pankaj sharma
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  • I found mine in `/usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog`, of all places. (CentOS server managed by Plesk.) – TRiG Apr 29 '14 at 10:50
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I was not able to locate logs anywhere and I was running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, turns out this was a permission issue for some strange reason. the problem was with the syslog permission. The following helped me to resolve it:

sudo chown syslog:adm /var/log
sudo chmod 0775 /var/log

sudo service rsyslog restart
sudo service postfix restart
Kunal
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