Book Image

Qmail Quickstarter: Install, Set Up and Run your own Email Server

Book Image

Qmail Quickstarter: Install, Set Up and Run your own Email Server

Overview of this book

This book starts with setting up a qmail server and takes you through virtualization, filtering, and other advanced features like hosting multiple domains, mailing lists, and SSL Encryption. Finally, it discusses the log files and how to make qmail work faster. Qmail is a secure, reliable, efficient, simple message transfer agent. It is designed for typical Internet-connected UNIX hosts. Qmail is the second most common SMTP server on the Internet, and has by far the fastest growth of any SMTP server. Qmail's straight-paper-path philosophy guarantees that a message, once accepted into the system, will never be lost. Qmail also optionally supports maildir, a new, super-reliable user mailbox format.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Making It Faster


While qmail is generally fast at processing, routing, and delivering email, in some circumstances its speed can be improved. This involves either tailoring qmail to take full advantage of the available hardware or improving the hardware. The best strategy depends on the situation.

Calculating Your Limits

It is important to first determine what speed is theoretically possible before analyzing qmail to find problems and improve speed. Qmail's ability to deliver email quickly is limited by several physical realities, including:

  • Network bandwidth

  • Disk-drive bandwidth

  • Server memory

For example, if an email server is connected to the Internet by a 320kbps link (or 40 kilobytes per second) and if the average email is ten kilobytes, then only 4 emails can be transmitted per second. That means 240 messages per minute, and 14,400 messages per hour, as long as there are no other forms of traffic on the network and (inaccurately) assuming there is no SMTP-protocol overhead. Thus, delivering...