Quoting D. J. Bernstein definition
qmail is a secure, reliable, efficient, simple message transfer agent. It is designed for typical Internet-connected UNIX hosts
References
- D. J. Bernstein's qmail site http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html
- Old qmail.org site
- Life with qmail
- Erwin Hoffman's "qmail support" site
- John Simpson's "qmail information" pages
- see also: my qmail picture (DJB Original pictures)
You can find in this page a comprehensible introduction on how a mail server works. The "qmail newbie's guide to relaying" (local copy) by Chris Johnson is very clear as well. It’s very suitable reading material for someone who’s just getting started.
Disclaimer
The aim of this short guide is NOT to teach you how a mail server works, even though by the time you’re finished reading it you will hopefully have a working e-mail server. These notes just serve as a reminder of the main steps to follow in order to build a quick installation of qmail and related software. I published them because of the lack of any up-to-date documentation concerning the qmail “distributions” I was familiar with, hoping that these notes could be useful to others out there. And I created this guide partly just because I enjoy doing this kind of thing.
Therefore, to learn in depth how a mail server works, you are invited to read carefully at least the references I will mention in each page.
Secondly, I am NOT responsible for what you do with your server :) Use my guide at your own risk.
Finally, comments, criticisms and suggestions are always welcome! :-p
Which OS?
These notes have been written without a specific Linux distribution in mind. I tested them on my Slackware virtual mail servers and several times on Debian and Ubuntu, and a number of guys out there can confirm that it works with other common distributions. In 2025 my packages has been modified to compile on FreeDSB and NetBSD as well.
Is this a toaster?
According to the DJB's definition of a toaster, the answer would be yes. I personally consider a toaster something a la Bill Shupp or qmailtoaster, which comes with the packages included. Since I prefer to let you check for the latest versions of everything yourself, strictly speaking this shouldn’t properly be considered a toaster. I would simply call this site “Roberto’s qmail notes” instead. At any rate, I’ve included a paragraph about qmail toasters here just to satisfy the search engines -as most people come here actually looking for a toaster :)).
Before we start...
As I am not a native english speaker, I will gladly accept every hint to improve the understanding of this guide.
Edit: I would like to address a big thank to Dave Martin, who revised my english in the qmail section of this guide.
Licence
Roberto's qmail notes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
