Vdelivermail is the key to the proper operation of your vpopmail installation. When qmail attempts to deliver a message to a vpopmail domain the first thing it does is look for a .qmail file that matches the incoming address within the top level directory for the domain. If no such .qmail-* file is found, qmail-local executes the .qmail-default file for the domain. This is the point where vpopmail takes over the the delivery process. Vdelivermail searches the user database for the domain, and either delivers the message to one of its existing accounts, or looks to its second parameter for instructions on what to do with messages to accounts that do not exist. For vpopmail to operate properly, the .qmail-default file in the domain directory must be setup properly. There should only be one line in the file, and it must look like this: | /path/to/vdelivermail '' delivery-instruction | - The initial pipe tells qmail-local to execute a program. /path/to/vdelivermail - This is the program that must be executed. '' This unused, empty parameter is required for historical reasons. delivery-instruction must be one of: someone@anotherexample.com - an email address anywhere in the world. /path/to/some/Maildir - a Maildir on the local server that the vpopmail user has write access to. delete - Delete all mail to non-existant users bounce-no-mailbox - Bounce all mail to non-existant users Bounce-no-mailbox is no longer recommended, as it allows your mail server to be used in Joe-Jobs. It now seems better to delete all mail to invalid addresses rather than spamming the random senders used by spam-bots. When creating a domain you can use one of the following: vadddomain -b someone@anotherexample.com example.com [password] vadddomain -b /path/to/some/Maildir example.com [password] vadddomain -b delete example.com [password] vadddomain -b bounce-no-mailbox example.com [password] In summary... the .qmail-default of every virtual domain MUST contain ONLY a single line that executes vdelivermail. The ONLY place you should EVER call vdelivermail is from the .qmail-default file of a vpopmail based virtual domain. There are four possible delivery options for non-existant mailboxes that must be the second parameter to vdelivermail. The empty first parameter is required. If you are not sure what you are doing writing .qmail files, and mucking around the internals of vpopmail, I strongly suggest you leave this file to the programs. Qmailadmin is probably the easiset way to manage the .qmail-default file once the domain has been created. Due to the requirement that Maildirs accessed by vpopmail must be owned by vpopmail I suggest that if you are going to use vpopmail at all that you place all of your domains under vpopmail. While it is possible to continue to have system users, and other styles of qmail virtual domains on a vpopmail system, you really have to be a qmail guru to make it all work.