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Postfix Address Classes

Introduction

Postfix version 2.0 introduces the concept of address classes. This is a way of grouping recipient addresses by their delivery method. The idea comes from discussions with Victor Duchovni. Although address classes introduced a few incompatibilities they also made it possible to improve the handling of hosted domains and of unknown recipients.

This document provides information on the following topics:

What are address classes good for?

Why should you care about address classes? This is how Postfix decides what mail to accept, and how to deliver it. In other words, address classes are very important for the operation of Postfix.

An address class is defined by three items.

  • The list of domains that are a member of the class: for example, all local domains, or all relay domains.

  • The default delivery method. For example, the local or smtp delivery agent. This helps to keep Postfix configurations simple.

  • The list of valid recipient addresses for that address class. The Postfix SMTP server rejects invalid recipients with "User unknown in <name of address class here> table". This helps to keep the Postfix queue free of undeliverable MAILER-DAEMON messages.

What address classes does Postfix implement?

Initially the list of address classes is hard coded, but this is meant to become extensible. The summary below describes the main purpose of each class, and what the relevant configuration parameters are.

The local domain class.

The virtual alias domain class.

  • Purpose: hosted domains where each recipient address is aliased to a local UNIX system account or to a remote address. A virtual alias example is given in the VIRTUAL_README file.

  • Domain names are listed in virtual_alias_domains. The default value is $virtual_alias_maps for Postfix 1.1 compatibility.

  • Valid recipient addresses are listed with the virtual_alias_maps parameter. The Postfix SMTP server rejects invalid recipients with "User unknown in virtual alias table". The default value is $virtual_maps for Postfix 1.1 compatibility.

  • There is no mail delivery transport parameter. Every address must be aliased to some other address.

The virtual mailbox domain class.

  • Purpose: final delivery for hosted domains where each recipient address can have its own mailbox, and where users do not need to have a UNIX system account. A virtual mailbox example is given in the VIRTUAL_README file.

  • Domain names are listed with the virtual_mailbox_domains parameter. The default value is $virtual_mailbox_maps for Postfix 1.1 compatibility.

  • Valid recipient addresses are listed with the virtual_mailbox_maps parameter. The Postfix SMTP server rejects invalid recipients with "User unknown in virtual mailbox table". If this parameter value is empty, the Postfix SMTP server accepts all recipients for domains listed in $virtual_mailbox_domains.

  • The mail delivery transport is specified with the virtual_transport parameter. The default value is virtual for delivery with the virtual(8) delivery agent.

The relay domain class.

  • Purpose: mail forwarding to remote destinations that list your system as primary or backup MX host. For a discussion of the basic configuration details, see the BASIC_CONFIGURATION_README document. For a discussion of the difference between canonical domains, hosted domains and other domains, see the VIRTUAL_README file.

  • Domain names are listed with the relay_domains parameter.

  • Valid recipient addresses are listed with the relay_recipient_maps parameter. The Postfix SMTP server rejects invalid recipients with "User unknown in relay recipient table". If this parameter value is empty, the Postfix SMTP server accepts all recipients for domains listed with the relay_domains parameter.

  • The mail delivery transport is specified with the relay_transport parameter. The default value is relay which is a clone of the smtp(8) delivery agent.

The default domain class.

  • Purpose: mail forwarding to the Internet on behalf of authorized clients. For a discussion of the basic configuration details, see the BASIC_CONFIGURATION_README file. For a discussion of the difference between canonical domains, hosted domains and other domains, see the VIRTUAL_README file.

  • This class has no destination domain table.

  • This class has no valid recipient address table.

  • The mail delivery transport is specified with the default_transport parameter. The default value is smtp for delivery with the smtp(8) delivery agent.

Improvements compared to Postfix 1.1

Postfix 2.0 address classes made the following improvements possible over earlier Postfix versions:

  • You no longer need to specify all the virtual(8) mailbox domains in the Postfix transport map. The virtual(8) delivery agent has become a first-class citizen just like local(8) or smtp(8).

  • On mail gateway systems, address classes provide separation of inbound mail relay traffic ($relay_transport) from outbound traffic ($default_transport). This eliminates a problem where inbound mail deliveries could become resource starved in the presence of a high volume of outbound mail.

  • The SMTP server rejects unknown recipients in a more consistent manner than was possible with Postfix version 1. This is needed to keep undeliverable mail (and bounced undeliverable mail) out of the mail queue. This is controlled by the smtpd_reject_unlisted_recipient configuration parameter.

  • As of Postfix version 2.1, the SMTP server also rejects unknown sender addresses (i.e. addresses that it would reject as unknown recipient addresses). Sender "egress filtering" can help to slow down an email worm explosion. This is controlled by the smtpd_reject_unlisted_sender configuration parameter.

Incompatibilities with Postfix 1.1

Postfix 2.0 address classes introduce a few incompatible changes in documented behavior. In order to ease the transitions, new parameters have default values that are backwards compatible.