README.QMAIL

This is a skeleton document containing what the author knows about qmail
(which isn't much).  Please feel free to submit embellishments and
corrections.

qmail supports two (perhaps more?) methods of routing mail to Majordomo for
a particular domain.  A call to Majordomo can go in the .qmail-default file
(the simplest, preferred method) or you can make several .qmail files for
each list and place them in the proper directory.  Majordomo supports the
former method automatically.

Majordomo receives messages via a single mj_enqueue command.  When given the
-Q option, mj_enqueue examines the contents of the LOCAL environment variable
and figures out what it should be doing.  If it sees that the address is
bound for some Majordomo-run address is does the appropriate processing and
does one of two things:

  if the -S option was given, it will 'exit 99' to stop processing of further
  lines in the .qmail-default file

  if the -S option was not given, it will 'exit 0' and qmail will continue
  to process other lines in the .qmail-default file

The -S option may make it possible for Majordomo to coexist with other
programs that make use of the -default mechanism.

So, for the virtual domain example.com with Majordomo responding to
majordomo@example.com, placing the following in the .qmail-default
directory:

| /usr/local/majordomo/bin/mj_enqueue -d example.com -S -Q majordomo

is sufficient to enable the list manager.


About automatic configuration:

During the configuration process, if Majordomo is told that it is running
under qmail it will ask if it should set up the necessary .qmail-default
files itself.  If so, it will prompt for the location of the qmail
directory for each domain and will create .qmail-default files there unless
those files already exist and contain lines that Majordomo doesn't
recognise (in which case it will do nothing).

If you elect not to have Majordomo maintain the .qmail-default files, you
can do so yourself.  If you elect not to use the -default mechanism at all
you must instead make .qmail files for each list, -request and -owner
address at your site.


Special note about the 'whoami' configuration variable:

A very small amount of functionality is lost because of this extremely
simple setup mechanism.  This is necessary because the decision about
whether or not an address is bound for Majordomo must be done as quickly as
possible; there is no time to start up the full Majordomo system to extract
configuration information.  Thus the value of the 'whoami' variable must be
passed on the command line (via '-Q') and if it is changed later (through
the normal Majordomo configuration mechanism) the .qmail-default file must
be edited to match.