The installation procedure for qmail is the familiar, djb classic, make setup check. Despite being the largest package in Bernstein's suite, the build/install procedure is fast and straightforward.

The instructions that follow assume you have first read the pre-install section, have a /var/qmail directory already in place, and all the groups and user accounts that qmail requires have already been added.

Now, if you haven't already, obtain the source distribution for the package, as well as any of the patches you require. Right click on the links above; use ftp, wget, curl; whatever works for you. The installation procedure described below assumes the package will be available on your system in /usr/local/djb/dist/qmail-1.03.tar.gz, and patches in /usr/local/djb/patches.

Verify the MD5 checksum:

# cd /usr/local/djb/dist
# md5 qmail-1.03.tar.gz
MD5 (qmail-1.03.tar.gz) = 622f65f982e380dbe86e6574f3abcb7c

If the reported checksum doesn't agree, the package you have has been altered or corrupted. Delete the package and download it again from a trusted source.

Unpack the archive into your build directory:

# cd /usr/local/djb/build
# tar -xzvf ../dist/qmail-1.03.tar.gz

You should now find a new directory in /usr/local/djb/build named qmail-1.03. Change into this directory:

# cd qmail-1.03

Apply patches as necessary:

• The errno patch is for GNU glibc systems as described in the appendix errno patches.

• The qmail_local patch (credited to Erik Sjolund) fixes a small programming error (gasp!) in qmail-local.c, to safely ignore any trailing space and tab characters that may wander into the command lines of users' .qmail files.

• The qmail-0.0.0.0 patch from Scott Gifford is a no-biggie but correct fix to the source file ipme.c, so that qmail also recognizes the IP address 0.0.0.0 as local (per RFC 1122). This patch is not necessary (though harmless) on OpenBSD platforms.

• The qmtpd-netstring patch is a fix for a programming error in the qmail-qmtpd.c code. This patch will protect a qmail-qmtpd service from accepting bad netstring input.

• The qmail-link-sync patch is Frank Denis' simple fix to the non-synchronous link() problem of qmail on Linux filesystems. (If you are using Bruce Guenter's syncdir fix instead, you don't need this patch.)

Note: none of these patches is strictly imperative, and only the first is necessary if compilation fails on a Linux system. If this is your first qmail installation, don't get too caught up in the issue of patches now. Later on you can read about batches o' patches and decide what's best for your own environment.

# patch -p1 < ../../patches/qmail-1.03.errno.patch
# patch -p1 < ../../patches/qmail-1.03.qmail_local.patch
# patch -p1 < ../../patches/qmail-0.0.0.0.patch
# patch -p1 < ../../patches/qmail-1.03.qmtpd-netstring.patch
# patch -p1 < ../../patches/qmail-1.03.link-sync.patch

Then continue with the build/install:

# make
# make setup check

Sometime you can let Bernstein know how everything worked out, substituting your own name in the following:

# (echo 'Angelina Jolie'; cat `cat SYSDEPS`) | mail djb-qst@cr.yp.to 

Of course, you can't really do that now, because qmail isn't actually running yet...

The next step is some configuration.