qmail equivalent of sendmail's virtmaps

I'm trying to figure out how to implement sendmail's virtmaps feature. As an example, let's say mail addressed to user@domain.com should be forwarded to local user joe. Some thoughts I have so far:

~/.qmail [www.lifewithqmail.org]
I don't think this is the way to go as I'm looking for something that goes the other way around, correct?

/var/qmail/.qmail-users [qmail-users(5)]
Looks right, but I'm missing the domain name in the address part. Furthermore, the fact that I'd need the uid/gid of the local user seems a bit odd.

That's how far I've gotten.

Requirements: users should be able to get their mail using either POP3 or IMAP and should have access to procmail should they so desire. I'm using the ./Maildir format.

No - I think this (combined with /var/qmail/control/virtualdomains) is what you're looking for. Put an entry like:

into /var/qmail/control/virtualdomains and add domain.com to /var/qmail/control/rcpthosts and restart qmail. Then just create .qmail files in /var/qmail/alias like this:

This will deliver all mail to user@domain.com to local user joe's maildir (assuming that's the defaultdelivery) in his home directory. You can use procmail via the .qmail file - see http://cr.yp.to/qmail/faq/incominguser.html#procmail for more details.


See Life with qmail for POP3 and IMAP installation instructions. Using procmail is described above.

Hello Alex,

I've looked at the virtual domain section, but especially the part where it says example.com:user is unclear to me. I'll explain that below.

I hope you can walk me through the following: Let's say I want to have qmail's equivalent of this fictitious /etc/virtusertable:



If I understand things correctly:

1. In /var/qmail/control/rcpthosts and locals I need to add

2. In /var/qmail/control/virtualdomains I need to add


In the docs, alias-rijndersholding.nl and alias-rijndersenvanschaik.nlare local users. I don't get this, they will never receive any mail anyway. Who does get the mail is defined in part 3.

3. In /var/qmail/alias I need to execute

et cetera.


I have this working. Just stated it in case it was relevant (thought maybe you would give me reasons for virtual accounts using courier-imap or something else).

Does this all sound good to you? (It doesn't to me, but then again, the one file in sendmail is so easy :/.)

PS. How do I get this forum to not turn e-mail addresses into e-mail links?

In a message sent to the qmail mailing list I see that the virtusertable "equivalency" (non-native english speaker) goes a lot further than I thought. Here's what I actually want qmail to do:



Unfortunately, the answer is "Look into qmail-users", which is perfectly reasonable. But I can't figure out how. Switching MTA's is harder than I thought it would be .

How can I set this up as a line in /var/qmail/users/assign needs the username/uid/gid of a particular user, so how can it be wildcarded?

I've found out where to look and how to do this. But first, it seems my qmail isn't sending or receiving messages. Gotta fix that first...

LWQ has the delivery set to /Mailbox instead of /Maildir/. There's working past midnight for ya .

Anyway, do I need to add the local domains to /var/qmail/control/virtualdomains also?