| 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. |