Configuring SMTPS in Virtualmin

I’m attempting to configure SMTPS in Virtualmin and am running into a roadblock. I followed the instructions here: http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/email/smtps without a problem but when I do the autoconfigure in Thunderbird it still says that the outgoing mail is unencrypted.

The steps I took (outlined in the link above) are that I added SMTP to the virtual server through Edit Virtual Server and then copied the SSL certificate over to Postfix via Manage SSL Certificates. I restarted the whole server for good measure as well. Might I be leaving something out?

I suppose I could try doing the manual configure in my email client (in case autoconfigure isn’t picking up on the encryption), but I don’t know what the proper outgoing parameters are for the manual configuration with regard to SSL and Authentication.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

are you using Sendmail or Postfix?

I also noticed this issue.

the mail client uses an “auto configuration” file, which can be customized under Server Tempaltes…

However, in this template, it uses different variables to select defaults or addresses which are used in this Template.

The problem is that I am not sure how it decided on content of these variables!

On my machines, It looks like Incoming Mail is “auto-configured” correctly, but SMTP defaults to port 25 (without any encryption).

as a temporary fix, you could just edit this template, and force it to use the SMTPS port (in my case, 465). on my system, it also seems to default to mail.mywebsite.com, instead of smtp.mywebsite.com or imap.mywebsite.com. where it gets these values, i do not know (maybe from MX Records?)

anyways, if you like, you could try to tinker with Virtualmin a bit, and get this working. if you decide that it looks like a Bug, you can submit a bug report to: https://sourceforge.net/p/webadmin/bugs/ and maybe somebody can help you there.

Hope this helps

also, I should note that the link you referred to… it only shows how to configure the certificate, and grant a user access to mail.

it wont do much if your server is not listening for connections of those ports which it was referring to.

this is different depending on whether you are running Sendmail or Postfix. You will need find the page to configure your mail server, using Webmin, and make sure that SMTP over SSL is enabled and turned on. that it is indeed listening for connections on the Secure SMTP port (465 or 587).

afterwards, test it by setting up thunderbird manually.

as far as the settings go, just change the SMTP server to connect to your domain name. set connection security to use SSL/TLS, on which ever port you are using for Secure SMTP.

and set authentication method to just Normal Password.

that should be it. test if you can send mail. if there is an error, you will need to check your log files for as to what is happening. usually this is under /var/log/mail.log or somewhere similar.

good luck,

Hi Rapidwebs:

Your first solution suggestion was a winner. I just changed the port to SMTPS in the server templates and the autoconfig nailed it. Many thanks!

i took the liberty of filing a bug report.

things should be working as expected when the next update is released.

so in due time, try the auto-configuration again. it will eventually work as expected.

  • Steve