Using Qmail

Servers that were put online after 10/10/2000 are equipped with QMail. QMail has many advantages over the old mail system. It handles virtual domains much better and is very easy to setup. A mailing list manager is also built in.  See the instructions below for the simple setup.

In a telnet session go to /home/vpopmail/bin

Type ./vadddomain domainname.  Example: ./vadddomain thesite.com

Qmail asks: Please enter password for postmaster:

You will be asked to enter the password two times. After you do you are done.  It may be a good idea to use the same password as for their FTP account. Keep it simple with less passwords to remember.

The domain is ready to use for mail.  The rest is done by the domain postmaster via the web. Every domain gets a postmaster account. The postmaster for each domain can create other pop accounts, aliases, forwarding accounts, and mailing lists all from a web browser. This takes all the mail administration work off of you, the server operator.

From this point the domain mail administrator would go to your servers main IP address followed by /cgi-bin/qmailadmin/

Example: http://123.456.789.123/cgi-bin/qmailadmin/

They will see a screen as shown below.

They will need to enter their domain name and the password for their postmaster account.

Once logged in the domain postmaster will see a screen such as the one below. They can add pop users or any other mail feature.

Advanced Features

As an option, you can limit the number of features any domain has as well as the amount of space they can use. Here's how.

If you want to put limits on things such as pop accounts follow the instructions below.

After you create a domain, a directory with that domain name will be created in  /home/vpopmail/domains

In the above directory you will see a directory with the domain names on your server. In this directory create a file called ".qmailadmin-limits" Make sure the file name starts with a dot "."

Inside this file you can set any limit you like or even disable mail features.  Here what should be in your file:

maxpopaccounts         X 
maxaliases                  X
maxforwards               X
maxmailinglists            X
maxautoresponders     X

Where "X" is the number you want for each feature. 
Example: maxpopaccounts     5.   This would allow the user to create 5 pop accounts but no more. Set the permissions on your .qmailadmin-limits file to 777.

Remember that the postmaster account will use one. If you want the user to have 5 accounts besides the postmaster account, set the number to 6.

You can disable a feature by entering 0 (zero).  The item won't even show on the qmailadmin menu if you enter 0.

You can set quotas in two ways.  By mailbox or by domain. To do this see the instructions below.

In /home/vpopmail/bin use the program called vsetuserquota. To set a quota for a certain mailbox do the following from your telnet session.

"./vsetuserquota email-address quota in bytes". Remember it's in bytes so do a little calculation before you set it. To set a 5 meg quota on a user called fred in the domain somesite.com you would use:
"./vsetuserquota fred@somesite.com 5000000"   

To set a quota for a domain and all of its users use the command

"./vsetuserquota domain.com quota in bytes.  The same rules apply, the quota is in bytes.

Example: "./vsetuserquota thesite.com 5000000"  The domain called thesite.com could not use more than 5 meg of space for all of their mailboxes combined.

  SMTP Service Note

Note: The server supports full SMTP service. The pop mail users will have to check their email before sending. This is called pop/before SMTP and is a feature to prevent spammers from using the server to send spam messages. Only those people with a valid mailbox on the machine can send mail. Note also that because the user must check their mail before sending, only pop users can send mail. Alias and forward addresses can't send mail because there is no pop mailbox to check.

POP Service Note

Also note that your domains will require your users to set the mail client software on their local machine as follows. They must use "user%domain.com" as their user ID.

Example: The user has the address fred@thesite.com.  When they setup their email software on their local machine they would enter the user ID as: "fred%thesite.com". Note that the email address does not change only the user ID in the email software.

Deleting a Domain

In a telnet session go to /home/vpopmail/bin

Type ./vdeldomain domain-name

Example: ./vdeldomain thesite.com

That's all there is too it.  Be careful with this command.  Once you run it all mail settings for the domain are gone. 

Setup a forward All email address for the whole domain

Create the domain as you normally would using the instructions at the top of this page.

This will create the mail directory and control files for the domain. If you create web-site.com it will make:
/home/vpopmail/domains/web-site.com

In that directory is a file called .qmail-default

Inside that file is a path to the default mail box. It points to the postmaster account.

Just delete that stuff and put in the email address that you want all the mail for the domain to go to. This is now the default mail address for the whole domain.

This can be a local pop mail box or a remote one. Any valid email address will work.  Simple!