One of the nice things about having such a modular architecture is that pieces of the architecture can be rearranged or removed. A good example of doing this is removing the queue from the picture, so that messages are sent immediately to another email server. There are several ways of achieving this end depending on the specific behavior required. The two primary methods are described here.

Dr. Bernstein's website has simple directions (http://cr.yp.to/qmail/mini.html) for setting up a queue-less qmail installation that uses the Quick Mail Queueing Protocol (QMQP) to transmit email messages to another qmail server (or any server that understands QMQP). He calls this setup mini-qmail. QMQP (similar to QMTP) avoids some of the latency of SMTP, and optimizes message transmission. However, only qmail currently supports QMQP, and so it may not be the best option in a mixed environment. These instructions direct that the qmail-queue binary be replaced with...