Q-Mail

This complete guide to installing, configuring and using qmail to manage Unix-based mail systems explores how this alternative to sendmail can solve specific mail-handling problems. qmail concentrates on common tasks like moving a sendmail setup to qmail, or setting up a "POP toaster", a system that provides mail service to a large number of users on other computers sending and retrieving mail remotely. The book also fills some crucial gaps in existing documentation, detailing exactly what the core qmail software does, how it routes and queues incoming mail, how it routes mail for local or remote delivery, precisely how it interprets a .qmail file for local delivery, and how it schedules remote deliveries and decides if and when to retry failures.

John R. Levine writes, lectures, and consults on Unix and compiler topics. He moderates the online comp.compilers discussion group at Usenet. He worked on Unix versions Lotus 1-2-3 and the Norton Utilities and was one of the architects of AIX for the IBM RT PC. He received a Ph.D in computer science from Yale in 1984.

Preface

ix

Part I. Introduction to Qmail

Internet Email

3

(7)

Mail Basics

3

(3)

Mailstore

6

(2)

The Structure of Internet Mail

8

(2)

How Qmail Works

10

(6)

Small Programs Work Together

10

(3)

What Does a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) Do?

13

(1)

The Pieces of Qmail

13

(3)

Installing Qmail

16

(11)

Where to Find Qmail

16

(3)

Creating the Users and Groups

19

(2)

Configuring and Making the Software

21

(4)

Patching Qmail

25

(2)

Getting Comfortable with Qmail

27

(25)

Mailboxes, Local Delivery, and Logging

27

(1)

An Excursion into Daemon Management

28

(2)

Setting Up the Qmail Configuration Files

30

(1)

Starting and Stopping Qmail

31

(4)

Incoming Mail

35

(5)

Procmail and Qmail

40

(1)

Creating Addresses and Mailboxes

41

(1)

Reading Your Mail

41

(1)

Configuring Qmail's Control Files

42

(6)

Using ~alias

48

(1)

fastforward and /etc/aliases

49

(3)

Moving from Sendmail to Qmail

52

(9)

Running Sendmail and Qmail in Parallel

52

(1)

User Issues

53

(2)

System Issues

55

(3)

Converting Your Aliases File

58

(2)

Trusted Users

60

(1)

Handling Locally Generated Mail

61

(9)

qmail-queue

61

(2)

Cleaning Up Injected Mail

63

(5)

Accepting Local Mail from Other Hosts

68

(1)

Distinguishing Injected from Relayed Mail

68

(2)

Accepting Mail from Other Hosts

70

(14)

Accepting Incoming SMTP Mail

70

(1)

Accepting and Cleaning Up Local Mail Using the Regular SMTP Daemon

70

(4)

Dealing with Roaming Users

74

(1)

SMTP Authorization and TLS Security

74

(5)

POP-before-SMTP

79

(5)

Delivering and Routing Local Mail

84

(6)

Mail to Local Login Users

84

(1)

Mail Sorting

85

(5)

Filtering and Rejecting Spam and Viruses

90

(17)

Filtering Criteria

90

(1)

Places to Filter

90

(1)

Spam Filtering and Virus Filtering

91

(1)

Connection-Time Filtering Tools

92

(4)

SMTP-Time Filtering Tools

96

(6)

Delivery Time Filtering Rules

102

(1)

Combination Filtering Schemes

103

(4)

Part II. Advanced Qmail

Local Mail Delivery

107

(13)

How Qmail Delivers Local Mail

107

(4)

Mailbox Deliveries

111

(1)

Program Deliveries

112

(3)

Subaddresses

115

(1)

Special Forwarding Features for Mailing Lists

115

(1)

The Users Database

116

(1)

Bounce Handling

117

(3)

Remote Mail Delivery

120

(7)

Telling Local from Remote Mail

120

(1)

qmail-remote

120

(1)

Locating the Remote Mail Host

120

(3)

Remote Mail Failures

123

(2)

Serialmail

125

(2)

Virtual Domains

127

(13)

How Virtual Domains Work

127

(1)

Some Common Virtual Domain Setups

128

(10)

Some Virtual Domain Details

138

(2)

POP and IMAP Servers and POP Toasters

140

(24)

Each Program Does One Thing

140

(2)

Starting the Pop Server

142

(3)

Testing Your POP Server

145

(2)

Building POP Toasters

147

(10)

Picking Up Mail with IMAP and Web Mail

157

(7)

Mailing Lists

164

(13)

Sending Mail to Lists

164

(4)

Using Ezmlm with qmail

168

(6)

Using Other List Managers with Qmail

174

(1)

Sending Bulk Mail That's Not All the Same

175

(2)

The Users Database

177

(6)

If There's No Users Database

177

(1)

Making the Users File

178

(2)

How Qmail Uses the Users Database

180

(1)

Typical Users Setup

180

(1)

Adding Entries for Special Purposes

181

(2)

Logging, Analysis, and Tuning

183

(12)

What Qmail Logs

183

(1)

Collecting and Analyzing Qmail Logs with Qmailanalog

184

(5)

Analyzing Other Logs

189

(1)

Tuning Qmail

189

(3)

Tuning to Deal with Spam

192

(1)

Looking at the Mail Queue with qmail-qread

193

(2)

Many Qmails Make Light Work

195

(6)

Tools for Multiple Computers and Qmail

195

(2)

Setting Up mini-qmail

197

(4)

A Compendium of Tips and Tricks

201

(12)

Qmail Won't Compile

201

(1)

Why Qmail Is Delivering Mail Very Slowly

201

(1)

Stuck Daemons and Deliveries

202

(2)

Mail to Valid Users Is Bouncing or Disappearing

204

(1)

Mail Routing

205

(1)

Local Mail Delivery Tricks

205

(1)

Delivering Mail on Intermittent Connections

206

(1)

Limiting Users' Mail Access

207

(2)

Adding a Tag to Each Outgoing Message

209

(1)

Logging All Mail

210

(1)

Setting Mail Quotas and Deleting Stale Mail

210

(1)

Backing Up and Restoring Your Mail Queue

211

(2)

A. A Sample Script

213

(7)

B. Online Qmail Resources

220

(3)

Index

223

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Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials