Qmail "user" and "group" info ?

[syn_ack]

Greetings,

I'm following the "Life with qmail" doc and I notice that they have in "/etc/group":

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qmail:*:2107:
nofiles:*:2108:

I show:
nofiles:x:200:
qmail:x:201:

For users in "/etc/passwd" (LWQ) shows:

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alias:*:7790:2108::/var/qmail/alias:/bin/true
qmaild:*:7791:2108::/var/qmail:/bin/true
qmaill:*:7792:2108::/var/qmail:/bin/true
qmailp:*:7793:2108::/var/qmail:/bin/true
qmailq:*:7794:2107::/var/qmail:/bin/true
qmailr:*:7795:2107::/var/qmail:/bin/true
qmails:*:7796:2107::/var/qmail:/bin/true

I show:
alias:x:200:200::/var/qmail/alias:/bin/false
qmaild:x:201:200::/var/qmail:/bin/false
qmaill:x:202:200::/var/qmail:/bin/false
qmailp:x:203:200::/var/qmail:/bin/false
qmailq:x:204:201::/var/qmail:/bin/false
qmailr:x:205:201::/var/qmail:/bin/false
qmails:x:206:201::/var/qmail:/bin/false

The UID's and GID's are different from what I have but that shouldn't matter should it? As long as the UID's are unique and the "user" belongs to the correct group right? No? If no, please let me know how that has an effect?

The other differences I see here are LWQ doc has "*" (astrixs) and I have "x"'s. What is the significance between the two?

LWQ doc shows thier "users" with "/bin"reading "/true" and all of mine are "/false". Do I need to change this to "true" and what exactly is the diff between "true" and "false"?

Is the following needed?

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####
Section 2.8.2.2

  (LWQ) states:
  Then set up the log directories:

    mkdir -p /var/log/qmail/smtpd
    chown qmaill /var/log/qmail /var/log/qmail/smtpd
####
    
 When I look in /var/log/qmail I don't see "smtpd" there.......... I see:
 
#### 
root@fusion qmail # ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x    7 qmaill   root          208 Mar  8 16:50 .
drwxr-xr-x    6 root     root         4216 Mar  9 03:00 ..
drwxr-xr-x    2 qmaill   root           72 Mar  8 22:33 qmail-pop3d
drwxr-xr-x    2 qmaill   root           72 Mar  8 22:33 qmail-qmqpd
drwxr-xr-x    2 qmaill   root           72 Mar  8 22:33 qmail-qmtpd
drwxr-xr-x    2 qmaill   root           72 Mar  8 22:33 qmail-send
drwxr-xr-x    2 qmaill   root           72 Mar  8 22:33 qmail-smtpd 
####

I've looked at "man useradd" and "man groupadd" and can't really gleem any info related to my questions there. "Googling" in the mean time.

Thanks,

[kashani]

Gentoo's excellent qmail ebuild does just about all the setup for you. This was actually one of the reasons I originally started using Gentoo. In any case, you can skip to the end of LWQ and not miss anything. The big things to configure in Gentoo are:

1. rcpthosts and the like in /var/qmail/control/
2. Doing the ln -sf into /service like the ebuild tells you to do.
3. Making any changes to /etc/tcp.smtp.cb or whatever it's called.
4. start qmail /etc/init.d/svscan start
5. You don't get a qmailcrtl, but most of it can be done using the binaries in /var/qmail/bin/

I'd also install qmhandle and supervise-scripts.

kashani

[syn_ack]

Thanks for the reply kashani.

I'm going to start over again. I didn't know if I should run:

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ebuild /var/db/pkg/net-mail/qmail-1.03-r13/qmail-1.03-r13.ebuild config

.... because I'm not running a public MX server. This is on a home lan. Hoping to have fetchmail pass mail to qmail. And qmail-pop3d to serve up the mail to the internal Windows and linux machines.
When clients need to send mail they point to qmail and qmail forwards thier mail to the various email accounts at the ISP which forwards it on to the final destination.

But since skipping the step/config option above seems to be so much trouble, I'm redoing the install again.

I'm still confused on why my "/etc/passwd" file has "the various qmail users, all with "/bin/false"? I'n all the other doc's I see this as "/bin/true"?

What effect does this have if any?

I'd also install qmhandle and supervise-scripts.

Why?

[kashani]

qmhandle is nice script for deleting files manually from the queue. For a home lan you probably won't need it, but it's real handy for a large ISP style server.

supervise scripts installs some little scripts to help you manage daemontools. I can never remember the svc -a whatever syntax. With supervise-scripts you get the follow and don't actually have to learn daemontools.

/usr/bin/svc-add
/usr/bin/svc-isdown
/usr/bin/svc-isup
/usr/bin/svc-remove
/usr/bin/svc-start
/usr/bin/svc-status
/usr/bin/svc-stop
/usr/bin/svc-restart
/usr/bin/svc-waitdown
/usr/bin/svc-waitup
/usr/bin/svscan-add-to-inittab
/usr/bin/svscan-start
/usr/bin/svscan-stopall

as to /bin/true and /bin/false their isn't much difference between the two other than exit code. Most people prefer to use /bin/false for daemons that will never login and /bin/true for users who don't get shell access, but might want to allow them ftp access or something like that in the future.

I'd run the config file. You will need to allow people on the local network to send via qmail and their IP's should be in the tcp.smtp thing. Or you can enable smtp-auth, but that's extra work.

kashani

[syn_ack]

Sweet.

Thanks kashani.

For the "supervise-scripts" pkg to work correctly. Do I need to add svscanboot to "inittab" or "rc-update add svscan default" ?

[edit] Nevemind. Its "inittab".

Thanks again.

[kashani]

I use supervise scripts to start and stop particular services not so much as a bootup option. In my case I did rc-update add svscan default which has daemontools start on boot. Then I use svc-* tools to start and stop individual services, add services, etc. Generally you shouldn't have to do much on your system.

My problelm is that I run a server that can send 1-2 million mails a day to customers. I run 5 instances of qmail each with its own disk for the queue. So I've got 10 qmail services in svc and they occasionally crash or hang due to sheer volume. I found it easier to do

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svc-restart qmail3-send qmail4-smtpd
svc-stop qmail1-send

then to use the svc -flags syntax I never got around to learning.

kashani