Configuring exim4 in Ubuntu to use GMail for SMTP

I wanted to route the mail through GMail SMTP servers since that would improve reliability. Turns out there is an indeed a way to make exim, the default MTA in debain/ubuntu to route all mail through GMail SMTP servers. Second round of trawling the interwebs started I managed to get a working setup without much trouble. But I had to piece together the content from separate sources. Here is how I did it.

Step 1

Run dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

• Choose mail sent by smarthost; received via SMTP or fetchmail
• Type System Mail Name: e.g. company.com
• Type IP Adresses to listen on for incoming SMTP connections: 127.0.0.1
• Leave Other destinations for which mail is accepted blank
• Leave Machines to relay mail for: blank
• Type Machine handling outgoing mail for this host (smarthost): smtp.gmail.com::587
• Choose NO, don’t hide local mail name in outgoing mail.
• Chose NO, don’t keep number of DNS-queries minimal (Dial-on-Demand).
• Choose mbox
• Choose NO, split configuration into small files
• Mail for postmaster. Leaving blank will not cause any problems though it is not recommended

Step 2

• Open the file /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template
• Find the line .ifdef DCconfig_smarthost DCconfig_satellite and add the following in that section
  

   send_via_gmail:        driver = manualroute        domains = ! +local_domains        transport = gmail_smtp        route_list = * smtp.gmail.com 

  
  If you have any other smarthost defined with “domains = ! +local_domains” remove that smarthost.
  
  
• Find the “begin authenticators”. In that section add the following
  

   gmail_login:        driver = plaintext        public_name = LOGIN        client_send = : yourname@gmail.com : YourGmailPassword 

  
  Make sure you have no other authenticators with the same public_name (LOGIN). Comment them out if needed (Thanks Jakub for reminding me)
  
  
• Find the comment  “transport/30_exim4-config_remote_smtp_smarthost”. In that section add
  

   gmail_smtp:        driver = smtp        port = 587        hosts_require_auth = $host_address        hosts_require_tls = $host_address 

Step 3

• Run update-exim4.conf
• Do /etc/init.d/exim4 restart

That should be it. You can test by using the command line mail client.

• Run mail user@example.com
• Give a subject and press enter
• Type something and press enter
• Type a single . (dot) and press enter
• Press enter for a blank CC:

This was on an Ubuntu server. I believe that this instructions will also work on Debain without any need for modifications.