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| 1 | qmail is a secure, reliable, efficient, simple message transfer agent. | ||
| 2 | It is meant as a replacement for the entire sendmail-binmail system on | ||
| 3 | typical Internet-connected UNIX hosts. | ||
| 4 | |||
| 5 | Secure: Security isn't just a goal, but an absolute requirement. Mail | ||
| 6 | delivery is critical for users; it cannot be turned off, so it must be | ||
| 7 | completely secure. (This is why I started writing qmail: I was sick of | ||
| 8 | the security holes in sendmail and other MTAs.) | ||
| 9 | |||
| 10 | Reliable: qmail's straight-paper-path philosophy guarantees that a | ||
| 11 | message, once accepted into the system, will never be lost. qmail also | ||
| 12 | supports maildir, a new, super-reliable user mailbox format. Maildirs, | ||
| 13 | unlike mbox files and mh folders, won't be corrupted if the system | ||
| 14 | crashes during delivery. Even better, not only can a user safely read | ||
| 15 | his mail over NFS, but any number of NFS clients can deliver mail to him | ||
| 16 | at the same time. | ||
| 17 | |||
| 18 | Efficient: On a Pentium under BSD/OS, qmail can easily sustain 200000 | ||
| 19 | local messages per day---that's separate messages injected and delivered | ||
| 20 | to mailboxes in a real test! Although remote deliveries are inherently | ||
| 21 | limited by the slowness of DNS and SMTP, qmail overlaps 20 simultaneous | ||
| 22 | deliveries by default, so it zooms quickly through mailing lists. (This | ||
| 23 | is why I finished qmail: I had to get a big mailing list set up.) | ||
| 24 | |||
| 25 | Simple: qmail is vastly smaller than any other Internet MTA. Some | ||
| 26 | reasons why: (1) Other MTAs have separate forwarding, aliasing, and | ||
| 27 | mailing list mechanisms. qmail has one simple forwarding mechanism that | ||
| 28 | lets users handle their own mailing lists. (2) Other MTAs offer a | ||
| 29 | spectrum of delivery modes, from fast+unsafe to slow+queued. qmail-send | ||
| 30 | is instantly triggered by new items in the queue, so the qmail system | ||
| 31 | has just one delivery mode: fast+queued. (3) Other MTAs include, in | ||
| 32 | effect, a specialized version of inetd that watches the load average. | ||
| 33 | qmail's design inherently limits the machine load, so qmail-smtpd can | ||
| 34 | safely run from your system's inetd. | ||
| 35 | |||
| 36 | Replacement for sendmail: qmail supports host and user masquerading, | ||
| 37 | full host hiding, virtual domains, null clients, list-owner rewriting, | ||
| 38 | relay control, double-bounce recording, arbitrary RFC 822 address lists, | ||
| 39 | cross-host mailing list loop detection, per-recipient checkpointing, | ||
| 40 | downed host backoffs, independent message retry schedules, etc. In | ||
| 41 | short, it's up to speed on modern MTA features. qmail also includes a | ||
| 42 | drop-in ``sendmail'' wrapper so that it will be used transparently by | ||
| 43 | your current UAs. | ||
