qmail FAQ

D. J. Bernstein, qmail@pobox.com
SGML format by Francisco J. Montilla, pacopepe@insflug.org

1. About This Document - Read This First

• 1.1 Credits
• 1.2 Disclaimer
• 1.3 Available Formats
• 1.4 Translations

2. Orientation

• 2.1 How many people use qmail?
• 2.2 What are the most common reasons for using qmail?
• 2.3 Is qmail compatible with sendmail?
• 2.4 What operating systems does qmail support?
• 2.5 Is there really a cash reward for security holes?

3. Installation

• 3.1 How do I find the qmail package?
• 3.2 How do I install qmail?
• 3.3 How do I switch slowly from sendmail to qmail?

4. How to solve problems

• 4.1 What should I do if I have trouble with qmail?
• 4.2 Is there commercial support for qmail?
• 4.3 Where can I find technical information about Internet mail?

5. Controlling the appearance of outgoing messages.

• 5.1 How do I set up user masquerading?
• 5.2 How do I set up host masquerading?
• 5.3 How do I set up Mail-Followup-To automatically?

6. Routing outgoing messages.

• 6.1 How do I set up a separate queue for a SLIP/PPP link?
• 6.2 How do I send local messages to another host?
• 6.3 How do I set up a null client?
• 6.4 How do I send outgoing mail through UUCP?
• 6.5 How do I deal with CNAME lookup failed temporarily?

7. Routing incoming messages by host

• 7.1 How do I receive mail for another host name?
• 7.2 How do I set up a virtual domain?
• 7.3 How do I set up several virtual domains for one user?
• 7.4 How do I organize a big network?

8. Routing incoming messages by user

• 8.1 How do I set up a mailing list?
• 8.2 How do I create aliases with dots?
• 8.3 How do I use sendmail's .forward files with qmail?
• 8.4 How do I use sendmail's /etc/aliases with qmail?
• 8.5 How do I make qmail defer messages during NFS or NIS outages?
• 8.6 How do I change which account controls an address?
• 8.7 How do I use procmail with qmail?
• 8.8 How do I use elm's filter with qmail?
• 8.9 How do I forward unrecognized usernames to another host?

9. Setting up Servers

• 9.1 How do I run qmail-smtpd under tcpserver?
• 9.2 How do I allow selected clients to send outgoing messages through my SMTP server?
• 9.3 How do I fix up messages from dumb SMTP clients?
• 9.4 How do I send messages by SMTP to an authorized dialup host when it makes an SMTP connection?
• 9.5 How do I set up qmail-pop3d?
• 9.6 How do I set up qmail-qmqpd?
• 9.7 How do I set up qmail-qmtpd?
• 9.8 How do I record all incoming SMTP traffic?

10. Configuring MUAs to work with qmail

• 10.1 How do I make pine use qmail-inject instead of SMTP?
• 10.2 How do I make MH use qmail-inject instead of SMTP?
• 10.3 How do I make BSD mail/mailx generate a Date with the local time zone?
• 10.4 How do I stop Sun's dtcm from hanging?

11. Administration

• 11.1 How do I tell qmail to read locals and virtualdomains?
• 11.2 How do I safely stop qmail-send?
• 11.3 How do I manually run the queue?
• 11.4 How do I run a supervised copy of qmail?
• 11.5 How do I avoid syslog?
• 11.6 How do I rejuvenate a message?
• 11.7 How do I keep a copy of all incoming and outgoing mail messages?

12. Reliability

• 12.1 What types of filesystems are safe for mail?
• 12.2 How do I back up and restore the queue disk?

13. Eficiency

• 13.1 How do I tell qmail to do more deliveries at once?
• 13.2 Does qmail scale to extremely large queues?
• 13.3 Does qmail back off from dead hosts?