Date Posted:22-02-2017

Its a biggest challenge for a new mail server to reach popular mail provider user’s inbox. One of the best way is to sign the outgoing mail server using dkim. There are multiple ways to implement dkim signing. We are going to use opendkim
as a service to sign the mail and postfix as a mailserver.

Assumption:
  1. Centos operating system.
  2. PostFix Mailserver

Default installation of postfix would be sufficient.

Implementation:

Starts with installing epel repo to the server. Some server may have epel repo already enabled.

For Centos 6:

wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

For Centos 7:

wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

yum install epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm (or)

rpm -ivh epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

Install opendkim application using yum

yum install opendkim

Delete all the content of /etc/opendkim.conf and add only the quoted text mentioned below.

vi /etc/opendkim.conf

AutoRestart             Yes
AutoRestartRate         10/1h
LogWhy                  Yes
Syslog                  Yes
SyslogSuccess           Yes
Mode                    sv
Canonicalization        relaxed/simple
ExternalIgnoreList      refile:/etc/opendkim/TrustedHosts
InternalHosts           refile:/etc/opendkim/TrustedHosts
KeyTable                refile:/etc/opendkim/KeyTable
SigningTable            refile:/etc/opendkim/SigningTable
SignatureAlgorithm      rsa-sha256
Socket                  inet:8892@localhost
PidFile                 /var/run/opendkim/opendkim.pid
UMask                   022
UserID                  opendkim:opendkim
TemporaryDirectory      /var/tmp

Create keys for the domain. Replace domain.tld with our domain name.

mkdir /etc/opendkim/keys/domain.tld
opendkim-genkey -D /etc/opendkim/keys/domain.tld/ -d domain.tld -s default
chown -R opendkim: /etc/opendkim/keys/domain.tld
mv /etc/opendkim/keys/domain.tld/default.private /etc/opendkim/keys/domain.tld/default

Open the file /etc/opendkim/KeyTable and add the following content.

vi /etc/opendkim/KeyTable

default._domainkey.domain.tld domain.tld:default:/etc/opendkim/keys/domain.tld/default

Open the file  /etc/opendkim/SigningTable and add the below lines. * represents all the email accounts associated with domain.tld.

vi /etc/opendkim/SigningTable

*@domain.tld default._domainkey.domain.tld

Add the trusted hosts to the file /etc/opendkim/TrustedHosts

vi /etc/opendkim/TrustedHosts

domain.tld

Repeat the same steps if you want opendkim to sign the different domains.

Now, the final steps to add the DNS record on the Nameserver. We need to add TXT record on the nameserver of the domain.tld.

cat /etc/opendkim/keys/domain.tld/default.txt

default._domainkey    IN    TXT    ( “v=DKIM1; k=rsa; ”
“p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCzkmrP3nbiXJNXU4UKAJAQX9JPtKhe5+EgfWkkc4mUsFfftGyKMW3oNkM40qldg4XhazCbW1BruQKaXwH/qWSGdFBQMem9ytF+xZwLDraNKVtRto9bPBpf+VEU34t3Pwarm179/anahErnSIWENfAeP/nWrf5qIHBjwsTtF59XgwIDAQAB” )

DNS changes normally requires 12 to 24 hours to reflect all over the world.

We can verify the DNS changes using the below commands.

host -ttxt default._domainkey.domain.tld

dig txt +short default._domainkey.tld

Configure Postfix:

So far, we have installed opendkim and now we are going to integrate opendkim with postfix application

Open the configuration /etc/postfix/main.cf and add the opendkim integration code.

vi /etc/postfix/main.cf

smtpd_milters           = inet:127.0.0.1:8892
non_smtpd_milters       = $smtpd_milters
milter_default_action   = accept
milter_protocol         = 2

Restart the opendkim, postfix services.

service opendkim start
chkconfig opendkim on
service postfix restart

Verification:

Now, send mail from your domain.tld either using application and check the results on the log.

 Feb 20 12:12:58 server opendkim[5644]: 5FF7E161215: DKIM-Signature field added (s=default, d=

domain.tld

)

We can send emails to check-auth@verifier.port25.com and you will receive a notification whether dkim signature added or not.

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