How to Install Exim on macOS

Exim is a popular mail transfer agent (MTA) that can be easily installed on macOS. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps to install Exim from its official website.

Prerequisites

Before you can install Exim, you need to make sure that you have the following prerequisites installed on your macOS:

  • Homebrew package manager
  • Xcode command-line tools

If you don't have these dependencies installed, you can easily install them by following these steps:

  1. Open the Terminal application by pressing Command+Space and typing "Terminal".
  2. Type the following command and press Enter to install Homebrew:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
  1. Once Homebrew is installed, type the following command in Terminal to install the Xcode command-line tools:
xcode-select --install

Installing Exim

Now that you have the prerequisites installed, you can proceed with the installation of Exim by following these steps:

  1. Open the Terminal application by pressing Command+Space and typing "Terminal".
  2. Type the following command and press Enter to install Exim:
brew install exim
  1. Wait for the installation to complete. Once it's finished, you can check the status of Exim by typing the following command:
brew services list

This will display a list of all the services installed on your system. You should see "exim" in the list with the status "started". This confirms that Exim is installed and running on your macOS.

Configuring Exim

By default, Exim is configured to send and receive mail from the local system. If you want to configure Exim to send and receive mail over the internet, you need to edit its configuration file.

  1. Open a Terminal window and type the following command to open the Exim configuration file in your default editor:
sudo nano /usr/local/etc/exim/exim.conf
  1. Locate the following line in the configuration file:
domainlist local_domains = @ : localhost : localhost.localdomain : example.com

This line defines the list of local domains that Exim should handle. You need to modify this line and add your own domain name or IP address. For example:

domainlist local_domains = @ : localhost : localhost.localdomain : example.com : 192.168.0.1

  1. Save the changes by pressing Control+X, followed by Y and Enter.

  2. Restart the Exim service to apply the changes by typing the following command:

brew services restart exim

Congratulations! You have successfully installed and configured Exim on your macOS. You can now use it to send and receive emails over the internet.