mdw@git.distorted.org.uk Git - qmail/blob - debian/README.debian

   1 WARNING - WARNING - WARNING - WARNING - WARNING - WARNING
   2
   3   qmail does not support dot-locking internally.
   4
   5   You are in danger of losing mail if you re-configure
   6   qmail without understanding the implications of this.
   7
   8 WARNING - WARNING - WARNING - WARNING - WARNING - WARNING
   9
  10 On Debian the standard location for a users mailbox is
  11
  12   /var/spool/mail/<username>
  13
  14 and when programs write to that file they are expected to lock the
  15 file to prevent another process from accessing it at the same time, and
  16 thus corrupting your mail file.
  17
  18 For reasons explained in /usr/doc/qmail/INSTALL.mbox, qmail does not do this.
  19
  20 The default setup uses /usr/sbin/qmail-procmail to perform the final
  21 delivery of mail with apropriate dot-locking to prevent loss of mail.
  22 This is just a script that invokes procmail.
  23
  24 You should not really need to invoke this as a user, but if you can
  25 think of a reason to do so, a line like this in your .qmail file will
  26 result in normal delivery via procmail:
  27
  28   |/usr/sbin/qmail-procmail
  29
  30 If you were to instead put something like:
  31
  32   /var/spool/mail/phil
  33
  34 in your .qmail file, it would deliver mail to that file, but would
  35 lock it using flock's rather than dot-lock's.  Unless you know
  36 different, that would probably mean that every other program on the
  37 system would consider the file to be unlocked, and would leave you
  38 open to mail loss.
  39
  40 Personally, I'd recommend moving to Maildir/ format if you can.  Read
  41 the files in /usr/doc/qmail to find out more.
  42
  43 ---
  44
  45 How the Debian setup differs from standard qmail setups:
  46
  47   The default setup sets aliasempty (i.e. the default delivery method)
  48   to be /usr/sbin/qmail-procmail, which is a wrapper around procmail.
  49
  50   This results in delivery into /var/spool/mail.
  51
  52   To change this to one of the more standard qmail setups edit
  53   /etc/init.d/qmail
  54
  55   The binaries normail found in /var/qmail/bin have been split between
  56   /usr/bin and /usr/sbin.
  57
  58   The configuration files have been moved to /etc/qmail and the queue
  59   has been moved to /var/spool/qmail.
  60
  61   Symbolic links have been placed in /var/qmail to make it look like a
  62   normal qmail setup.
  63
  64 Phil Hands <phil@hands.com>