Ubuntu Manpage: dot-qmail - control the delivery of mail messages

Provided by: qmail_1.06-6.2~deb10u1build0.18.04.1_amd64

NAME

       dot-qmail - control the delivery of mail messages

DESCRIPTION

       Normally  the qmail-local program delivers each incoming message to your system mailbox, homedir/Mailbox,
       where homedir is your home directory.

       It can instead write the mail to a different file or directory, forward it to another address, distribute
       it to a mailing list, or even execute programs, all under your control.

THE QMAIL FILE

To change qmail-local's behavior, set up a .qmail file in your home directory.

.qmail contains one or more lines. Each line is a delivery instruction. qmail-local follows each
instruction in turn. There are five types of delivery instructions: (1) comment; (2) program; (3)
forward; (4) mbox; (5) maildir.

(1) A comment line begins with a number sign:

# this is a comment

qmail-local ignores the line.

(2) A program line begins with a vertical bar:

|preline /usr/ucb/vacation djb

qmail-local takes the rest of the line as a command to supply to sh. See qmail-command(8) for
further information.

(3) A forward line begins with an ampersand:

&me@new.job.com

qmail-local takes the rest of the line as a mail address; it uses qmail-queue to forward the message
to that address. The address must contain a fully qualified domain name; it must not contain extra
spaces, angle brackets, or comments:

# the following examples are WRONG
&me@new
&<me@new.job.com>
& me@new.job.com
&me@new.job.com (New Address)

If the address begins with a letter or number, you may leave out the ampersand:

me@new.job.com

Note that qmail-local omits its new Return-Path line when forwarding messages.

(4) An mbox line begins with a slash or dot, and does not end with a slash:

/home/djb/Mailbox.sos

qmail-local takes the entire line as a filename. It appends the mail message to that file, using
flock-style file locking if possible. qmail-local stores the mail message in mbox format, as
described in mbox(5).

WARNING: On many systems, anyone who can read a file can flock it, and thus hold up qmail-local's
delivery forever. Do not deliver mail to a publicly accessible file!

If qmail-local is able to lock the file, but has trouble writing to it (because, for example, the
disk is full), it will truncate the file back to its original length. However, it cannot prevent
mailbox corruption if the system crashes during delivery.

(5) A maildir line begins with a slash or dot, and ends with a slash:

/home/djb/Maildir/

qmail-local takes the entire line as the name of a directory in maildir format. It reliably stores
the incoming message in that directory. See maildir(5) for more details.

If .qmail has the execute bit set, it must not contain any program lines, mbox lines, or maildir lines.
If qmail-local sees any such lines, it will stop and indicate a temporary failure.

If .qmail is completely empty (0 bytes long), or does not exist, qmail-local follows the defaultdelivery
instructions set by your system administrator; normally defaultdelivery is ./Mailbox, so qmail-local
appends the mail message to Mailbox in mbox format.

.qmail may contain extra spaces and tabs at the end of a line. Blank lines are allowed, but not for the
first line of .qmail.

If .qmail is world-writable, qmail-local stops and indicates a temporary failure.

SAFE QMAIL EDITING

       Incoming messages can arrive at any moment.  If you want to safely edit your .qmail file, first  set  the
       sticky bit on your home directory:

            chmod +t $HOME

       qmail-local  will  temporarily  defer delivery of any message to you if your home directory is sticky (or
       group-writable or other-writable, which should never happen).  Make sure to

            chmod -t $HOME

       when you are done!  It's a good idea to test your new .qmail file as follows:

            qmail-local -n $USER ~ $USER '' '' '' '' ./Mailbox

EXTENSION ADDRESSES

In the qmail system, you control all local addresses of the form user-anything, as well as the address
user itself, where user is your account name. Delivery to user-anything is controlled by the file
homedir/.qmail-anything. (These rules may be changed by the system administrator; see qmail-users(5).)

The alias user controls all other addresses. Delivery to local is controlled by the file
homedir/.qmail-local, where homedir is alias's home directory.

In the following description, qmail-local is handling a message addressed to local@domain, where local is
controlled by .qmail-ext. Here is what it does.

If .qmail-ext is completely empty, qmail-local follows the defaultdelivery instructions set by your
system administrator.

If .qmail-ext doesn't exist, qmail-local will try some default .qmail files. For example, if ext is foo-
bar, qmail-local will try first .qmail-foo-bar, then .qmail-foo-default, and finally .qmail-default. If
none of these exist, qmail-local will bounce the message. (Exception: for the basic user address, qmail-
local treats a nonexistent .qmail the same as an empty .qmail.)

WARNING: For security, qmail-local replaces any dots in ext with colons before checking .qmail-ext. For
convenience, qmail-local converts any uppercase letters in ext to lowercase.

When qmail-local forwards a message as instructed in .qmail-ext (or .qmail-default), it checks whether
.qmail-ext-owner exists. If so, it uses local-owner@domain as the envelope sender for the forwarded
message. Otherwise it retains the envelope sender of the original message. Exception: qmail-local
always retains the original envelope sender if it is the empty address or #@[], i.e., if this is a bounce
message.

qmail-local also supports variable envelope return paths (VERPs): if .qmail-ext-owner and .qmail-ext-
owner-default both exist, it uses local-owner-@domain-@[] as the envelope sender. This will cause a
recipient recip@reciphost to see an envelope sender of local-owner-recip=reciphost@domain.

ERROR HANDLING