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Starting KumoMTA

If you followed all the instructions above without errors, you should now have a working MTA on a properly sized server.

Check to see if it is already running from the install instructions above:

sudo systemctl status kumomta

If the service is already running, you will need to restart it to apply the changes made above:

sudo systemctl restart kumomta

Start the MTA with this:

sudo systemctl start kumomta

You can enable it to restart as a service with a reboot with:

sudo systemctl enable kumomta

Alternately you can start it manually with:

 sudo /opt/kumomta/sbin/kumod --policy \
 /opt/kumomta/etc/policy/init.lua --user kumod&
  • Using sudo allows KumoMTA to run as a privileged user so it can access port 25 which is needed to deliver via SMTP to the internet.
  • The daemon kumod is the MTA.
  • The directive --policy makes kumod load the 'init.lua' file as configuration policy.
  • Because we launched with sudo, you need to use the directive --user and provide a valid user to assign responsibility to.
  • The line ends with a & that forces the daemon to run in the background and returns you to a usable prompt (use fg to bring it back to the foreground).

You can also get immediate feedback by pre-pending KUMOD_LOG=kumod=info (or debug for more detail):

sudo KUMOD_LOG=kumod=info /opt/kumomta/sbin/kumod --policy /opt/kumomta/etc/policy/init.lua --user kumod&

If all goes well, it should return a PID and drop you back to a Linux prompt.

If KumoMTA does not start, refer to the Troubleshooting Page of the User Guide.