Installation of Qmail on shell.mv.net, August 2002

Important announcement for shell users. Please read this entire memo because there are some changes you may be required to make.

On the shell server, sendmail is being replaced with qmail. This change should take effect on or around Monday, August 19, 2002. This message is intended only to announce the replacement and to ask you to make a few changes. You can get more information about the reasons for the replacement, and what the change will mean to you, by going to the customer service web site (http://home.mv.net/) and going to the Tech Support link. There, you will find a "Shell Qmail" topic. (You can use the "lynx" program to do this from your shell prompt.) You can also contact MV's CS staff, or engage in discussion in the mv.forum.shell newsgroup.

This particular change will only affect mail on UNIX shell accounts. It should not affect users of IP accounts or shell users who currently have their email forwarded off of the shell server. Other MV customers using our primary mail and mailbox server will receive a separate, later notice regarding the change to that server when it happens.

WHAT: We're replacing the sendmail mail delivery software on the shell server with a different software system called "qmail." This will in fact be a trial rollout before we also move qmail to our main mail server. We've been testing and using qmail on a private server; making it "live" on the shell server will be both a rollout and a final test in a real-world situation.

WHY: This is part of our work on giving our customers better control over email. Part of this process involved stepping back and reevaluating the entire mail delivery system. We believe that qmail is a good choice to give us (and you) greater flexibility and performance in handling of email.

HOW THIS WILL AFFECT YOU: Most of you who simply want to access your mail will not be significantly affected, apart from making a few changes that we're asking you to do (see the "WHAT YOU WILL HAVE TO CHANGE" item below). You'll still be able to access your mail in the usual ways, have a .forward file, or run procmail on your mail. However, qmail gives you a few more options that you didn't have before, as discussed in the home.mv.net area mentioned above. In addition to these options, you will also have access to the "ezmlm" mailing list manager, which you can use to set up mailing lists using your shell account. (More will come on this topic.) Remember that any use of advanced features during the initial rollout period should be for experiment only.

WHAT YOU WILL HAVE TO CHANGE: There are a couple of things that are changing on the system, and we would like you to make some corresponding changes to your shell account. Partly we'd like you to move away from having mail definitions hardcoded in your shell startup scripts, and towards using the system-defined settings. This will allow us to better make global changes in the future without requiring you to do anything.

MV's CS staff will be able to help you or further answer questions. Realize that the files in your personal area are your own personal files. The staff will not be aware of the specific files in your area.

• .forward files: .forward files are still being supported, but you can no longer directly reference a filename as a destination. If you had something like >mailbox or /dev/null in your .forward file, this will have to be changed to invoke a program to store the mail, like so:
  "|touch mailbox; >>mailbox"
  or
  "|cat >/dev/null"
  You can make these changes right now, in advance of the qmail installation on Monday, to help us out. However when we do the actual install we will attempt to correct any .forward files that we see that need fixing.

• Mailbox location: your inbox will no longer be /usr/mail/name (or the equivalent /usr/spool/mail/name or /var/mail/name) -- rather, it will be a file named "Mailbox" in your home directory. (Keeping all mailboxes in a central directory is an old standard that we've wanted to move away from for some time. While this software change doesn't require this mailbox move, it provides a convenient time to do it.) We will create appropriate symbolic links so that you can, for a time, continue to access the /var/mail/name mailbox. However, we will want to remove the /var/mail directory in the fairly near future so, as soon as you can, you should change any direct references to /usr/spool/mail (or /usr/mail or /var/mail) in your shell startup scripts. Basically this means removing commands that set "MAIL" or "mail" variables in your .login and .cshrc files if you use csh (most users), or in your .profile (or other) file if you have changed your default shell to use sh or bash or sh. More specifically:

• csh users .login file: if you have explicitly set any MAIL environment variable in your .login file, please remove that. This variable will be set by the system-wide login script.

• csh users .cshrc file: your original .cshrc file sets a local variable called "MAIL" to point to your /usr/mail/name mailbox. This variable is then used to set a "mail" variable. We recommend that you edit your .cshrc file and find and remove (or comment out) lines that look like this:

        set MAIL=/usr/mail/$USER
        set mail=(1 $MAIL)
  

  That is, lines that set the "MAIL" and "mail" variables. Note that "MAIL" was only being used to set "mail" -- you should not need to set "MAIL" at all.

• Other shells: If you use a different shell than the default csh, you may have created your own rc file. If needed, you can set your MAIL environment variable by referencing the script /usr/local/bin/defaultmailbox

        MAIL=`/usr/local/bin/defaultmailbox`
  

  Once you've changed your .login or .cshrc or .profile files, you should logout and log back in to see if the changes have taken effect correctly.

• We'd also like you to verify that you have inherited environment variables such as "QMAILHOST" from the system startup script(s). (At the shell prompt, type the command "env" and see what you've got.) If you haven't, you can set them by sourcing the system mail-settings script, e.g. if you use csh:

  source /usr/local/etc/mailenv.csh

  or if you use sh or bash or ksh:

  . /usr/local/etc/mailenv.sh

  If you need to make any more elaborate settings for some reason, you can use the system-wide scripts above (as well as /etc/csh.login, /etc/csh.cshrc, and /etc/profile) as a guide.

THIS IS A TEST: While we're fairly certain that the qmail installation will be permanent, we're doing it on the shell server first as a staging effort. Shell users can present lots of variety in the ways you do things, so we aren't certain we know every single way that the mail software will be stressed. So, the first two weeks or so of qmail's use should be considered an interim period where we may have to take it back out if something really strange happens. However, the changes we've asked you to make should not need to be undone, as they place a greater reliance on system-level settings.

MOST OF ALL, THIS IS A GOOD THING: This is a step towards improving email functionality. We can't make such a large change without having some impact on you, but we're trying to make that as small as we can. Hopefully the biggest impact is that you had to read all of this (the lesser one is that you have to make the requested edits).