1 This document explains what you, as a user, will notice when the system

     2 switches from sendmail to qmail.

     3 

     4 This is a global document, part of the qmail package, not reflecting the

     5 decisions made by your system administrator. For details on

     6 

     7    * which local delivery agent qmail is configured to use,

     8    * whether qmail is configured to use dot-forward,

     9    * whether ezmlm is installed,

    10    * whether fastforward is installed, and

    11    * all other local configuration features,

    12 

    13 see your local sendmail-qmail upgrade announcement (which your system

    14 administrator may have placed into /var/qmail/doc/ANNOUNCE).

    15 

    16 

    17 --- Mailbox location

    18 

    19 If your system administrator has configured qmail to use binmail for

    20 local deliveries, your mailbox will be in /var/spool/mail/you, just as

    21 it was under sendmail.

    22 

    23 If your system administrator has configured qmail to use qmail-local for

    24 local deliveries, your mailbox will be moved to ~you/Mailbox. There is a

    25 symbolic link from /var/spool/mail/you to ~you/Mailbox, so your mail

    26 reader will find the mailbox at its new location.

    27 

    28 

    29 --- Loop control

    30 

    31 qmail-local automatically adds a Delivered-To field at the top of every

    32 delivered message. It uses Delivered-To to prevent mail forwarding

    33 loops, including cross-host mailing-list loops.

    34 

    35 

    36 --- Outgoing messages

    37 

    38 qmail lets you use environment variables to control the appearance of

    39 your outgoing mail, supplementing the features offered by your MUA. For

    40 example, qmail-inject will set up Mail-Followup-To for you automatically

    41 if you tell it which mailing lists you are subscribed to. See

    42 qmail-inject(8) for a complete list of features.

    43 

    44 If you're at (say) sun.ee.movie.edu, qmail lets you type joe@mac for

    45 joe@mac.ee.movie.edu, and joe@mac+ for joe@mac.movie.edu without the ee.

    46 sendmail has a different interpretation of hostnames without dots.

    47 

    48 

    49 --- Forwarding and mailing lists

    50 

    51 qmail gives you the power to set up your own mailing lists without

    52 pestering your system administrator.

    53 

    54 Under qmail, you are in charge of all addresses of the form

    55 you-anything. The delivery of you-anything is controlled by

    56 ~you/.qmail-anything, a file in your home directory.

    57 

    58 For example, if you want to set up a bug-of-the-month-club mailing list,

    59 you can put a list of addresses into ~you/.qmail-botmc. Any mail to

    60 you-botmc will be forwarded to all of those addresses. Mail directly to

    61 you is controlled by ~you/.qmail. You can even set up a catch-all,

    62 ~you/.qmail-default, to handle unknown you- addresses.

    63 

    64 See dot-qmail(5) for the complete story. Beware that the syntax of

    65 .qmail is different from the syntax of sendmail's .forward file.

    66 

    67 If your system administrator has configured qmail to use the dot-forward

    68 compatibility tool, you can put forwarding addresses (and programs) into

    69 .forward the same way you did with sendmail.

    70 

    71 If your system administrator has installed ezmlm, you can use ezmlm-make

    72 to instantly set up a professional-quality mailing list, handling

    73 subscriptions and archives automatically.

    74 

    75 If your system administrator has installed fastforward, you can easily

    76 manage a large database of forwarding addresses.