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mini-HOWTO install qmail with MH
Christopher Richardson (rdn@tara.n.eunet.de)
v1.3 13.06.97
I am just documenting my installation experiences to offer some help
to other users who wish to use the above combination for their email.
1. Introduction
My thanks to all netizens who have helped me, especially Tony Nugent
(tony@trishul.sci.gu.edu.au), David Summers
(david@summersoft.fay.ar.us) and S.u.S.E ( Linux distribution) who has
made installing Linux so much easier, and the authors of the above
excellent programs.
What is qmail and why should I use it? Here is the author┤s (Dan
Bernstein) blurb:
qmail is a secure, reliable, efficient, simple message transfer agent.
It is meant as a replacement for the entire sendmail-binmail system on
typical Internet-connected UNIX hosts. Secure: Security isn't just a
goal, but an absolute requirement. Mail delivery is critical for
users; it cannot be turned off, so it must be completely secure. (This
is why I started writing qmail: I was sick of the security holes in
sendmail and other MTAs.) Reliable: qmail's straight-paper-path
philosophy guarantees that a message, once accepted into the system,
will never be lost. qmail also supports maildir, a new, super-reliable
user mailbox format. Maildirs, unlike mbox files and mh folders, won't
be corrupted if the system crashes during delivery. Even better, not
only can a user safely read his mail over NFS, but any number of NFS
clients can deliver mail to him at the same time. Efficient: On a
Pentium under BSD/OS, qmail can easily sustain 200000 local messages
per day---that's separate messages injected and delivered to mailboxes
in a real test! Although remote deliveries are inherently limited by
the slowness of DNS and SMTP, qmail overlaps 20 simultaneous
deliveries by default, so it zooms quickly through mailing lists.
(This is why I finished qmail: I had to get a big mailing list set
up.) Simple: qmail is vastly smaller than any other Internet MTA.
Some reasons why: (1) Other MTAs have separate forwarding, aliasing,
and mailing list mechanisms. qmail has one simple forwarding mechanism
that lets users handle their own mailing lists. (2) Other MTAs offer a
spectrum of delivery modes, from fast+unsafe to slow+queued. qmail-
send is instantly triggered by new items in the queue, so the qmail
system has just one delivery mode: fast+queued. (3) Other MTAs
include, in effect, a specialized version of inetd that watches the
load average. qmail's design inherently limits the machine load, so
qmail-smtpd can safely run from your system's inetd. Replacement for
sendmail: qmail supports host and user masquerading, full host hiding,
virtual domains, null clients, list-owner rewriting, relay control,
double-bounce recording, arbitrary RFC 822 address lists, cross-host
mailing list loop detection, per-recipient checkpointing, downed host
backoffs, independent message retry schedules, etc. In short, it's up
to speed on modern MTA features. qmail also includes a drop-in
``sendmail'' wrapper so that it will be used transparently by your
current UAs.
2. My System Details
Cyrix 6x86, with the SuSE Linux Distribution. Kernel patched to 2.0.28
with the unofficial Cyrix patch ( from http://www.escnet.com/). Elsa
Winner Trio +64 graphics card.
PPP link to ISP
3. Qmail Installation
Follow the INSTALL instructions exactly.
Notes:
Please take the time to read the Fine documentation completely. The
numerals refer to the installation steps in the above INSTALL doc.
╖ 2 - I had to set up the groups and users manually as per
INSTALL.ids
╖ 7 - ./qmail-makectl did not work on my system. I added my domain
name (mickey.n.eunet.de) manually in /var/qmail/control/me
╖ 23 - Make sure qmail-smtpd is spelt correctly in the inetd-conf
file. (I spelt it incorrectly i.e. qmail-smptd, which took me two
days to find:( ) smtp stream tcp nowait qmaild
/var/qmail/bin/tcp-env tcp-env /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd
3.1. Maildir2smtp
Dan Bernstein has provided a package for sending queued email to an
ISP via dial-in. This package is available as serialmailxxx from his
site.
Install this package as described in the man page (Thanks Rupert
Mazzucco (maz@pap.univie.ac.at), it works out of the box!
maildir2smtp - blast a maildir across SMTP
maildir2smtp is designed to pass messages along a SLIP or
PPP link. To set this up on the disconnected end, create
a new maildir in alias:
# maildirmake ~alias/pppdir
# chown -R alias ~alias/pppdir
Put
:alias-ppp
into control/virtualdomains and
./pppdir/
into ~alias/.qmail-ppp-default. Don't forget the extra
slash in pppdir/. Then, in the PPP startup script, do
maildir2smtp ~alias/pppdir alias-ppp- $IP `hostname`
replacing $IP with the remote IP address.
Notes:
╖ Please read the Fine manual page completely.
╖ Maildir2smtp requires the dotted IP address of your mail server. If
you do not have this then ping YourMail.host.country which will
return the IP.
╖ This command can be included in your login script to flush all
queued mail after logging in to your ISP.
4. MH Installation
In addition to this, I also replaced /mh-6.8.4/mts/sendmail/smail.c
with Dan Bernstein┤s mh-qmail-smail.c
This is what my mh-6.8.4/conf/MH looks like:
______________________________________________________________________
bin /usr/bin/mh
etc /usr/lib/mh
#mail
#mandir /usr/man
#manuals standard
chown /bin/chown
#cp cp
#ln ln
#remove mv -f
cc gcc
ccoptions -traditional -O2 -m486 -D_NFILE='getdtablesize()'
-DSIGEMT=SIGUSR1
curses -lncurses
#ldoptions -s
#ldoptlibs
lex flex
#oldload off
#ranlib on
mts sendmail
#mf off
#bboards off
#bbdelivery off
#bbhome /usr/spool/bboards
pop on
popdir /usr/lib/mh
sharedlib sys5
slflags -fPIC
slibdir /usr/lib
mailgroup mail
signal void
sprintf int
#editor prompter
#debug off
#regtest off
options ATHENA
options BIND
options DPOP
options DUMB
options FCNTL
options MHE
options MHRC
options MIME
options MORE='"/usr/bin/less"'
options OVERHEAD
options POP2
options POPSERVICE='"pop3"'
options RENAME
options RPATHS
options RPOP
options SOCKETS
options SVR4
options SYS5
options SYS5DIR
options TERMINFO
options UNISTD
options VSPRINTF
______________________________________________________________________
Notes:
╖ I have only compiled ``mts sendmail'' - read in comp.mail.mh
somewhere that /smtp can cause problems. Dominic Mitchell
(hdm@demon.net) wrote in comp.mail.mh (13 June 1997):
``Not quite. With this option MH still talks SMTP, just over a pipe
and not over a network. You *really* need a line in your
/.mh_profile which says:
postproc: /usr/local/nmh/lib/spost
Or whever it's kept on your system. This will pass the message
directly to sendmail in the traditional manner. You're using qmail
of course, so sendmail will be qmail's wrapper script, but that's
just fine.'' Thanks Dominic.
╖ I have remmed out ``mail'' because I want to control it via
mtstailor
4.1. mtstailor
As qmail delivers mail to the home directory (~/Mailbox). I added the
following to my mtstailor
localname: mickey
localdomain: n.eunet.de
mmdfldir:
mmdflfil: Mailbox
uucpldir:
uucplfil:
mmdelim1: \001\001\001\001\n
mmdelim2: \001\001\001\001\n
mmailid: 0
umincproc:
lockldir:
sendmail: /usr/lib/sendmail
Notes:
╖ sendmail: /usr/lib/sendmail is a link to the qmail sendmail wrapper
in /var/qmail/bin
╖ MH does not like the tilde notation (~/) use /home instead or leave
blank which acco