How to Start Logging with Postfix

This tutorial explains how to start logging with Postfix. Postfix is a mail server that attempts to be fast, easy to administer, and secure.

Nowadays, logging becoming an important part of almost every service. As a mail server administrator, you will appreciate debugging troubles with the logs (for example, when the mail server does not receive or deliver email).

Since Postfix 3.4, the mail server offers build-in logging support. Alternatively, you can use more standard logging with the Syslog. This tutorial will describe both approaches.

In this tutorial, you will do following actions:

• You will configure Postfix logging with Syslog, view the default settings, change them, and view the log content.
• You will configure custom Postfix logging without Syslog.
• You will set up a log rotation for Postfix with Syslog and Logrotate daemon. Alternatively, you will configure a custom log rotation without the Syslog.

Prerequisites

You will need:

• Ubuntu 20.04 distribution including the non-root user with sudo access.
• Installation of the Postfix with the basic configuration (a minimal version of the Postfix must be 3.4, otherwise some logging features won't be supported).
• Basic understanding of how to use cron to automate tasks.

Step 1 — Configuring Logging with Syslog

Postfix logs can be maintained through the Syslog, which is a logging daemon for Linux that can maintain logs from multiple sources. The advantage of the Syslog is a centralised approach and built-in support of log rotation. On the other hand, if the Syslog maintains too many logs, then it could cause a system performance decrease. Postfix default installation on the Ubuntu 20.04 retrieved through apt (apt install postfix), logs into the Syslog.

Postfix configuration is defined in the directory /etc/postfix, especially in the files main.cf and master.cf. However, rather than editing these files directly, you can use a command-line utility postconf that allows you to view and change a configuration setting.

Viewing Default Configuration

You can view your default configuration by executing postconf with the argument maillog_file:

$ postconf maillog_file

The directive maillog_file determines the name of an optional log file that is written by the Postfix service. The directive can hold the following values:

• An empty value selects logging to the Syslog.
• A value /dev/stdout determines logging to standard output.
• Otherwise, the value holds an absolute path to the log file (typically, /var/log/postfix.log).

You'll see the program's output appear on the screen:

Output
maillog_file =

The output shows that Postfix logs into the Syslog.

Changing Default Configuration

If your directive maillog_file holds a non-empty value and you want to log to the Syslog, you must change it. Firstly, you must stop the Postfix service by executing postfix stop (sudo required):

$ sudo postfix stop

You'll see the program's output appear on the screen:

Output
postfix/postfix-script: stopping the Postfix mail system

Now, you can change the value of the directive maillog_file to an empty value (sudo required):

$ sudo postconf maillog_file=

At last, you must start Postfix with the new configuration:

$ sudo postfix start

You'll see the program's output appear on the screen:

Output
postfix/postfix-script: warning: symlink leaves directory: /etc/postfix/./makedefs.out
postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system

At this point, your Postfix service logs are maintained with the Syslog.

The value in the maillog_file must start with a prefix that is specified in the directive maillog_file_prefixes (default prefixes are /var, and /dev/stdout). This is a safety feature to contain the damage from a single configuration mistake. You can specify one or more prefix strings, separated by comma or white space.

Viewing Syslog

When your Postfix service logs into the Syslog, you can view these logs with the journactl utility. If you don't know what is the journald and journactl, you can read the tutorial How to Control Journald with Journalctl.

Let's view the Syslog records that belongs to the Postfix service by executing journactl:

$ journalctl -u postfix@-.service

The option -u specifies to list only records of the service with the name postfix@-.service (the name of the Postfix service in the system). You'll see the program's output appear on the screen:

Output
June 14 08:50:38 alice systemd[1]: Starting Postfix Mail Transport Agent (instance -)...
June 14 08:50:39 alice postfix/master[55893]: daemon started -- version 3.4.13, configuration /etc/postfix
June 14 08:50:39 alice systemd[1]: Started Postfix Mail Transport Agent (instance -).
June 14 09:16:13 alice systemd[1]: Stopping Postfix Mail Transport Agent (instance -)...
June 14 09:16:13 alice postfix/postfix-script[58960]: stopping the Postfix mail system
June 14 09:16:13 alice postfix/master[55893]: terminating on signal 15
June 14 09:16:13 alice systemd[1]: postfix@-.service: Succeeded.
June 14 09:16:13 alice systemd[1]: Stopped Postfix Mail Transport Agent (instance -).
June 14 09:16:13 alice systemd[1]: Starting Postfix Mail Transport Agent (instance -)...
June 14 09:16:14 alice postfix/postfix-script[59643]: warning: symlink leaves directory: /etc/postfix/./makedefs.out
June 14 09:16:14 alice postfix/postfix-script[59829]: starting the Postfix mail system
June 14 09:16:14 alice postfix/master[59831]: daemon started -- version 3.4.13, configuration /etc/postfix
June 14 09:16:14 alice systemd[1]: Started Postfix Mail Transport Agent (instance -).
June 14 09:19:20 alice postfix/pickup[59832]: F3710A248D: uid=1000 from=<alice>
June 14 09:19:21 alice postfix/cleanup[60444]: F3710A248D: message-id=<20210614071920.F3710A248D@alice>
June 14 09:19:21 alice postfix/qmgr[59833]: F3710A248D: from=<alice@example.com>, size=304, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
June 14 09:19:21 alice postfix/local[60446]: F3710A248D: to=<alice@example.com>, orig_to=<alice>, relay=local, delay=0.04, delay>
June 14 09:19:21 alice postfix/qmgr[59833]: F3710A248D: removed
...

The output shows syslog records about Postfix, starting, stopping, but also about sending mails.

Configuring Log Destination

Syslog typically stores log records into the file /var/log/syslog. However, the Syslog configuration allows storing log records into different files by the facility (for further information, read the tutorial How to view Linux logs and their configuration on Ubuntu 20.04. One of the facilities is also a mail, soo the Syslog stores all mail logs into the file /var/log/mail.log. You can view this file, and you will see that the content is identical to the previous journactl query.

Step 2 — Configuring Logging Without Syslog

If you don't want to use the Syslog daemon for the log maintenance, you can set up Postfix to store logs into the stdout, stderr, or custom**file**.

Let's change the destination of the Postfix log. At first, you must stop the Postfix service by executing postfix stop (sudo required):

$ sudo postfix stop

Now, you can change the value of the directive maillog_file to the desired log destination (sudo required):

$ sudo postconf maillog_file=/some/log/file

There are two typical use cases:

• Logging to a custom file solves a usability problem for macOS and eliminates multiple problems for systemd-based systems. In this case, you can set up the value to the /var/log/postfix.log.
• Logging to stdout (/dev/stdout) is useful when Postfix runs in a container because Docker stores to the log everything captured from the stdout.

When you set up the value of the maillog_file, then you must start Postfix with the new configuration:

$ sudo postfix start

At this point, your Postfix service configuration is reloaded.

Step 3 — Configuring Rotating Logs

The log files size must be controlled because their size always grows over time. Linux solves this problem with a concept called log rotation. In this step, we will configure log rotation for Postfix with Syslog, alternatively for custom log without Syslog support.

Syslog with Logrotate

If you are using Postfix with the Syslog then you can use Logrotate daemon. Ubuntu 20.04 uses Logrotate by default, and it also rotates mail logs (including Postfix, if installed). Logrotate configuration for the Postfix log rotation is defined in the file /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf. Let's open this file (sudo required for the file editing):

$ sudo nano /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf

The file contains following lines that defines log rotation for the different facilities:

/var/log/mail.info
/var/log/mail.warn
/var/log/mail.err
/var/log/mail.log
/var/log/daemon.log
/var/log/kern.log
/var/log/auth.log
/var/log/user.log
/var/log/lpr.log
/var/log/cron.log
/var/log/debug
/var/log/messages
{
    rotate 4
    weekly
    missingok
    notifempty
    compress
    delaycompress
    sharedscripts
    postrotate
        /usr/lib/rsyslog/rsyslog-rotate
    endscript
}

The directives in the curly brackets define how to rotate the log defined above them (for example, mail.log, kern.log, or auth.log have the same log rotation settings). The file defines that mail log (including Postfix log /var/log/mail.log) rotate logs with the following settings:

• rotate 4: Log files are rotated 4 times before being removed. If rotate is set to 0 then old versions are removed rather than rotated.
• weekly: Logs are rotated every week. Alternatively, you can specify another time interval (daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly). You can also specify to rotate every hour (hourly), but note that the logrotate daemon runs daily. In such a case, you have to change the logrotate cron job interval to be able to really rotate logs hourly.
• missingok: Daemon do not report any error if the log file is missing.
• notifempty: Do not rotate the log if it is empty.
• delaycompress: Postpone compression of the previous log file to the next rotation cycle, because it is still used by some program.
• postrotate/endscript: The lines between postrotate and endscript are executed after the log file is rotated.

All possible directives are described in logrotate manual pages (you can see them by executing man logrotate). When you edit, remove, add settings that match your use case, you can save, and close the file. Now, your Postfix logs will be rotated periodically with Logrotate.

Custom Log Rotation Without Syslog

If you set up logging into the custom file then Syslog no longer manages log rotation of the Postfix service. Postfix offers command postfix logrotate that do the following:

1. Rename the current log by appending a suffix that contains the date and time. Timestamp suffix format can be configured in the variable maillog_file_rotate_suffix. The default suffix is %Y%m%d-%H%M%S. For example, the log file postfix.log is renamed into the postfix.log.20210615-114926).
2. Postfix daemon is reloaded, and the old file is closed.
3. Old log is compressed. The compression program is configured with the variable maillog_file_compressor parameter (default: gzip).

You can run this command by hand, or you can create a cronjob. Let's create cronjob by executing crontab:

$ crontab -e

The -e option is used to edit the current crontab using the editor specified by the environment variable. You'll be redirected to the file that defines cronjobs. The file contains some commented-out instructions on how to use it:

# Edit this file to introduce tasks to be run by cron.
#
# Each task to run has to be defined through a single line
# indicating with different fields when the task will be run
# and what command to run for the task
#
# To define the time you can provide concrete values for
# minute (m), hour (h), day of month (dom), month (mon),
# and day of week (dow) or use '*' in these fields (for 'any').
#
# Notice that tasks will be started based on the cron's system
# daemon's notion of time and timezones.
#
# Output of the crontab jobs (including errors) is sent through
# email to the user the crontab file belongs to (unless redirected).
#
# For example, you can run a backup of all your user accounts
# at 5 a.m every week with:
# 0 5 * * 1 tar -zcf /var/backups/home.tgz /home/
#
# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
#
# m h  dom mon dow   command

Add the new line at the end of the file, and put there following line of the code:

# m h  dom mon dow   command
0 1 * * * postfix logrotate

The code defines a new cron job that runs script postfix logrotate every day at 1 am. However, you can set up a period that matches your use case. At this, point you can save the file and close it. If everything succeeded then you will see the following output in the console:

Output
crontab: installing new crontab

Now, your custom Postfix log will be rotated periodically with cronjob.

The command postfix logrotate does not remove old logs. You must treat them on your own.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you configured Postfix logging with Syslog, viewed the default settings, changed them, and view the log content. You configured custom Postfix logging without Syslog. At last, you set up a log rotation for Postfix with Syslog and Logrotate daemon. Alternatively, you configured a custom log rotation without the Syslog.

Article by

Jenda Tovarys

Jenda leads Growth at Better Stack. For the past 5 years, Jenda has been writing about exciting learnings from working with hundreds of developers across the world. When he's not spreading the word about the amazing software built at Better Stack, he enjoys traveling, hiking, reading, and playing tennis.

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