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@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +qmail is a secure, reliable, efficient, simple message transfer agent. +It is meant as a replacement for the entire sendmail-binmail system on +typical Internet-connected UNIX hosts. + +Secure: Security isn't just a goal, but an absolute requirement. Mail +delivery is critical for users; it cannot be turned off, so it must be +completely secure. (This is why I started writing qmail: I was sick of +the security holes in sendmail and other MTAs.) + +Reliable: qmail's straight-paper-path philosophy guarantees that a +message, once accepted into the system, will never be lost. qmail also +supports maildir, a new, super-reliable user mailbox format. Maildirs, +unlike mbox files and mh folders, won't be corrupted if the system +crashes during delivery. Even better, not only can a user safely read +his mail over NFS, but any number of NFS clients can deliver mail to him +at the same time. + +Efficient: On a Pentium under BSD/OS, qmail can easily sustain 200000 +local messages per day---that's separate messages injected and delivered +to mailboxes in a real test! Although remote deliveries are inherently +limited by the slowness of DNS and SMTP, qmail overlaps 20 simultaneous +deliveries by default, so it zooms quickly through mailing lists. (This +is why I finished qmail: I had to get a big mailing list set up.) + +Simple: qmail is vastly smaller than any other Internet MTA. Some +reasons why: (1) Other MTAs have separate forwarding, aliasing, and +mailing list mechanisms. qmail has one simple forwarding mechanism that +lets users handle their own mailing lists. (2) Other MTAs offer a +spectrum of delivery modes, from fast+unsafe to slow+queued. qmail-send +is instantly triggered by new items in the queue, so the qmail system +has just one delivery mode: fast+queued. (3) Other MTAs include, in +effect, a specialized version of inetd that watches the load average. +qmail's design inherently limits the machine load, so qmail-smtpd can +safely run from your system's inetd. + +Replacement for sendmail: qmail supports host and user masquerading, +full host hiding, virtual domains, null clients, list-owner rewriting, +relay control, double-bounce recording, arbitrary RFC 822 address lists, +cross-host mailing list loop detection, per-recipient checkpointing, +downed host backoffs, independent message retry schedules, etc. In +short, it's up to speed on modern MTA features. qmail also includes a +drop-in ``sendmail'' wrapper so that it will be used transparently by +your current UAs. |