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PostSRSd

Sender Rewriting Scheme daemon for Postfix

Overview

The Sender Rewriting Scheme (SRS) is a technique to forward mails from domains which deploy the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to prohibit other Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) from sending mails on their behalf. With SRS, an MTA can circumvent SPF restrictions by replacing the envelope sender with a temporary email address from one of their own domains. This temporary address is bound to the original sender and only valid for a certain amount of time, which prevents abuse by spammers.

Installation

Prebuilt packages

If your Linux distribution has a sufficiently recent PostSRSd package, install it! Unless you need a specific new feature or bugfix from a newer version, it will be much less of a maintenance burden.

If you are interested in packaging PostSRSd for a Linux distribution, have a look at the packaging notes. In particular, we are currently looking for a new Debian maintainer (#145).

Building from source

Fetch the latest source tarball or clone the repository from Github, unpack it and run:

cd path/to/source
mkdir _build && cd _build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local
make -j
sudo make install

PostSRSd has a few external build dependencies:

  • CMake version 3.14 or newer
  • gcc or a similar C99 capable C compiler.
  • pkgconf or pkg-config is optional to improve detection of system settings
  • libConfuse is required to parse the configuration file.
  • sqlite3 is optional to store envelope senders; enable it with -DWITH_SQLITE=ON as additional argument for cmake.
  • hiredis is an optional alternative to store envelope senders in Redis; enable it with -DWITH_REDIS=ON.
  • libMilter is needed only if you wish to configure PostSRSd as milter; enable it with -DWITH_MILTER=ON.
  • check is needed if you want to build and run the unit test suite; otherwise disable it with -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF.
  • Python is needed for the optional blackbox tests.

PostSRSd relies on the FetchContent module of CMake for its dependency resolution. Please refer to its documentation if you wish to tweak the discovery process.

Configuration

PostSRSd itself is configured by postsrsd.conf (see the example for a detailed documentation of all options). PostSRSd will look for this file in /usr/local/etc. The most important configuration options are domains (or domains-file), so PostSRSd knows about your local domains, and secrets-file with a secret passphrase for authentication. The other options often work out of the box. You can also find the example configuration installed in /usr/local/share/postsrsd. Feel free to use it as base for your own configuration.

Postfix Setup

For integration with Postfix, the recommended mechanism is via the canonical maps of the cleanup daemon. Add the following snippet to your /etc/postfix/main.cf:

sender_canonical_maps = socketmap:unix:srs:forward
sender_canonical_classes = envelope_sender
recipient_canonical_maps = socketmap:unix:srs:reverse
recipient_canonical_classes = envelope_recipient, header_recipient

The srs part in the lookup table mappings above is the path to the unix socket relative to /var/spool/postfix; you will have to change this if you change the socketmap configuration of PostSRSd. If you prefer a TCP connection, e.g. inet:localhost:10003, you need to change the mapping to something like socketmap:inet:localhost:10003:forward.

Experimental Milter Support

PostSRSd 2.x has added optional support for the Milter protocol. If you enabled it at compile time, you can set the milter option in postsrsd.conf and add the corresponding line to your etc/postfix/main.cf:

smtpd_milters = unix:srs_milter

Note that the Milter code is less tested and should be considered experimental for now and not ready for production. Feel free to report bugs or open pull requests if you try it out, though.

Migrating from version 1.x

Most configuration options can no longer be configured with command line arguments, so you will have to set them in postsrsd.conf. PostSRSd 1.x used shell variables in /etc/default/postsrsd. If you migrate your settings, you should set

  • srs-domain to the value from SRS_DOMAIN
  • domains to the list of values from SRS_EXCLUDE_DOMAINS
  • secrets-file to the file name from SRS_SECRET
  • unprivileged-user to the user name from RUN_AS
  • chroot-dir to the directory from CHROOT

Be aware that PostSRSd 2.x uses socketmap: tables, which are NOT compatible with tcp: tables. This also means that PostSRSd 2.x requires at least Postfix 2.10 now, and you need to update your Postfix configuration as detailed above.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Can I configure PostSRSd so it will only rewrite the envelope sender if the email is not delivered locally?

    This is not supported currently but might be added to the milter at some point in the future.

    If PostSRSd is integrated with Postfix using the canonical maps, it is almost impossible, because the canonicalization occurs before any routing decision is made. Only if you happen to use separate Postfix server instances for forwarding and local delivery, you can trivially configure PostSRSd this way.

  • I am serving multiple domains with my MTA. Can I configure PostSRSd to rewrite addresses to the specific domain for which an email is forwarded?

    If PostSRSd is integrated with Postfix using the canonical maps, this is not possible, because PostSRSd processes sender and recipient addresses separately and never sees the email context.

    If PostSRSd is configured as milter, it might be theoretically possible, but it is not supported yet, for two reasons:

    1. It is not trivial to implement and conflicts with other interesting features such as rewriting only if the email is actually forwarded.
    2. The SRS address is normally not visible to the recipient anyway.

    It is much simpler and more robust to have a dedicated SRS (sub-)domain. You need to pick a domain for the reverse DNS lookup of your MTA IP address anyway, so setup an srs subdomain there and use it for SRS rewriting.

  • I configured PostSRSd correctly; why are some of my emails still rejected with a DMARC failure?

    Short Answer: Because the originating MTA is misconfigured.

    Long Answer: DMARC has two conditions for an email, but either of them is sufficient to pass the DMARC check:

    1. The SMTP envelope sender must have the same domain as the From: address in the mail header.
    2. The email must have a valid DKIM signature from the domain of the From: address.

    The first condition in combination with SPF prevents mail forwarding by unauthorized third parties, the second condition in combination with DKIM prevents sender address spoofing. Effectively, DMARC only allows mail forwarding if the mail is not tampered with.

    By design, SRS must break the first condition, but it will preserve the second, if the originating MTA signs all outgoing mails with DKIM.

    Unfortunately, some mail admins forget (or misconfigure) DKIM, which effectively breaks forwarding for everyone. Try to contact the mail administrator for the sending domain and tell them to fix their setup.