Tech Notes/System/Qmail and Friends/Installing Qmail For various licencing reasons, plus the fact that Qmail hasn't been updated by its author for a while, the best procedure to build and install Qmail is to start with the ~~netqmail~~ package (which is Qmail plus third-party fixes) and build from source. The process of getting a Qmail system up and running is rather tedious (particularly if you use Dan Bernstein's daemon and TCP wrapping packages), but well documented on Dave Sill's {link:Life with Qmail|http://www.lifewithqmail.org} site. Follow the {link:installation instructions|http://www.lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html#installation} verbatim, and do not lose that packet of little screws. There are one or two things which don't quite work out, and one or two points worth emphasising, so I note them here. As well as ~~netqmail~~ package (currently at version 1.05), we build and install {link:daemontools|http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html} 0.76 (a set of tools for running UNIX services, a la inetd) and {link:ucspi-tcp|http://cr.yp.to/ucspi-tcp.html} 0.88 (a set of command-line tools for assembling and running TCP/IP server applications). Notes: - The packages are best configured and compiled as root, since the compilation and installation are usually done in the same step. However I don't bother with the particular source directories mentioned; building in root's home directory works fine, and the location of the build directories doesn't actually matter. - We are targetting Maildir as the format for mail everywhere, so our ~~defaultdelivery~~ file contains "~/Maildir/". This needs to be created (with ~~maildirmake~~) for all users who want to receive mail, and who are not making their own arrangements via procmail. - The Qmail loggers don't work if you follow the instructions: for some reason, the symbolic links created for ~~daemontools~~ don't work. (This is on several varieties of Linux.) Just copy the files from ~~\~/admin/daemontools-XXX/command/~~ to ~~/command/~~. - Do fetch and run the {link:inst_check|http://www.lifewithqmail.org/inst_check} shell script to check your installation - it ~~will~~ find things that need snagging by hand. Now it's probably time for [Tech Notes/System/Qmail and Friends/Running Procmail]. 2006-01-14 17:10:31.036 2005-12-19 16:52:17.411