SENDMAIL.md (3090B)
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.