Arch Linux

I went through a total nightmare with my mail server, and I too had this same problem. The vpopmail package is horribly out of date, so an update would be greatly appreciated. I'm stuck with an older version of PHP and mySQL because of this package.

To sum it up..."me too"

You just have to rebuild vpopmail with abs and it should work.

The current version of vpopmail has no maintainer. Before I would adopt it, I would like to know: in what state is qmail at this moment? Is it usable on arch? Or does it need work too?

I didn't want to touch qmail stuff for a long while, because I got sick of its structure. I don't like it at all when I compare it against the way I use postfix.

If I can get a test-buddy that likes to test packages I compile, I would like to do the maintainership of qmail/vpopmail/ezmlm,etc, which are very much outdated on archlinux.

I'm actually using vpopmail with postfix. Is it absolutely necessary to build it against qmail? I tried qmail and it was a mess.

Hmm, vpopmail can work with postfix?
The reason why vpopmail is abandoned is because it is supposed to work with qmail, which is a shitty piece of software on arch. I hate the way DJB behaves with his arrogant /package, /command and /var/qmail usage.

I am definitely a good candidate for your test-buddy, Jan. I've been working with qmail/vpopmail/vmailmgr/squirrelmail for some time. I won't have tons of time to devote to it, but I'm happy to help out where I can. I do have the infrastructure to do fresh installs of OSes on test machines very quickly and easily at work, so I can put up a box, bang on it, and report results fairly easily.

I was also vaguely involved in the early creation and testing of some of these packages when Manolis was doing it. The qmail-install package is a pain. I have a version of a qmail-1.05 ("netqmail") package, but I think it may be subtlely broken.. I need to do some more testing. I *think* that the compiled binaries of the unadulterated qmail-1.05 source are redistributable (per DJB), but I'd have to double check.

I don't think vpopmail links against any particular MTA, does it? It should work with postfix, exim, qmail. I *think* I prefer vmailmgr, but the verdict's still out on that one until I finish the current toaster development rev. In any case, both of these virtual user systems supply checkpasswd-compatible authentication scripts which let your MTA and other daemons (IMAP, etc) properly authenticate virtual users and find and deliver email for them, so they shouldn't need to directly link against any MTA.

Has anyone done a good analysis of postfix's security? The security model is so strong in qmail that it still seems worth using it, in spite of the ridiculous redistribution restrictions. If I could be convinced that postfix were as secure by design, I'd probably switch.

- P

If you want to rebuild qmail package, instead usign 1.03 there is a link that can be usefull. Fro qmail homepage:
"Charles Cazabon, Dave Sill, Henning Brauer, Peter Samuel, and Russell Nelson have put together a netqmail-1.05 distribution of qmail. It is comprised of qmail-1.03 plus the recommended patches, some documentation, and a shell script which prepares the files for compilation."
http://mirrors.sunsite.dk/qmailwww/netqmail/

I long ago built a package for qmail 1.05, however, I think it needed some more testing; can someone confirm?

Also, we need to figure out of djb's onerous license terms permit one to redistribute the binary form of netqmail 1.05; based on the version number bump and official backing by djb, I'm assuming these binaries could be distributed.

I've come to the conclusion, personally, that DJBs license agreements are overly restrictive. Though I love qmail, I'm probably going to be switching to postfix myself.

As such, I'm going to decline to do further work on the qmail package.

However, there's another issue here in that vpopmail has been orphaned. Anyone who use it have time to tool up a new PKGBUILD for a new version? If so, attach it here and I'll update the package this once.

In the meanwhile, we can put this package in the new AUR (very soon) and see if anyone votes for it. Feel free to chime in here if you use vpopmail and would like to see it maintained.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what we should do about qmail and vpopmail? Has this bug outlived its usefulness? I'm not sure what the next action should be.

AFAIK, I think netqmail must be supplied as source also. Anyway some patches still do not support netqmail (must be rediffed).

I found a note on Qmail author site.

Exception: You are permitted to distribute a precompiled var-qmail package if (1) installing the package produces exactly the same /var/qmail hierarchy as a user would obtain by downloading, compiling, and installing qmail-1.03.tar.gz, fastforward-0.51.tar.gz, and dot-forward-0.71.tar.gz; (2) the package behaves correctly, i.e., the same way as normal qmail+fastforward+dot-forward installations on all other systems; and (3) the package's creator warrants that he has made a good-faith attempt to ensure that the package behaves correctly. It is not acceptable to have qmail working differently on different machines; any variation is a bug.

You can send him the explanation the final qmail will be packaged and see if he agrees or not. Also any info on owr simple (no patches except when needed) policy would probably help.