MasqMail README

MasqMail is a mail server designed for hosts that are not permanently
connected to the internet. It handles outgoing messages, i.e. those
that are to be sent over the non-permanent link (usually a ppp or slip
connection over a modem or ISDN adapter) specially and delivers them
only when explicitely told to do so. There is support for multiple
providers, it is possible to write different configurations for each
one. The configuration chosen is selected at delivery time, so that if
for example a delivery of a message failed while connected with
provider 1, it may be delivered when connected to provider 2. For each
provider another mail host (or none) can be specified.

MasqMail provides (a yet simple) mechanism to rewrite headers, also
depending on the current connection. This makes it possible to deliver
messages with a return address on the local network which will be
rewitten at delivery time. The purpose of this is:

- to allow delivery failure messages that are produced on the local
network to be delivered immediately, while those that are produced
outside can be delivered to a mailbox on the internet, to be retrieved
later.

- to give mail servers a return address which they can accept if they
check for spam mail. Many mail servers require a return address which
has the same domain as the server it is getting the message from. If
you normally connect to only one provider, this is usually not a
problem as you can configure your mailer to a fixed address (but then
there is still the problem with the failure messages...), but it is a
problem if you use different ones from time to time.

MasqMail shall once be a complete replacement for sendmail (or other
MTAs such as exim, qmail or smail) on a local network, but it is NOT
supposed to be installed in a network with a permanent internet
connection (at least if it is not behind a secure firewall) because
it has no ability to check for undesired relaying or spam filtering.

Missing, but soon to be realized features:

- .forward file support (alias file is supported)
- mailer demon messages (mail from the server in cases of delivery failures
or malformed addresses)

Future plans are:

- initiate connections on its own
- integration to the masqdialer system (mserver) as an option
- possibly a pop3 server

For installation instructions, see INSTALL.

Bugs: MasqMail is still very young, and there are probably at lot of
bugs in it. I need every bug reported to me! If you do, please send me
the configuration files, the logs, the version, and a good description
on how to reproduce the error. The more bug reports I get, the better
masqmail will get!

CREDITS:
--------

I would like to thank everyone who has submitted suggestions and bug
reports. Special thanks to:

Gregor Hoffleit for beta testing and his suggestions for delivering
mail immediately when online.
Gregor Hoffleit again for supplying a patch which made maqmail work with mutt.
And again for making the Debian package. And more patches.

Dale Perkel for patiently trying to make MM compile and run with libc5 and
various bug reports.

Andre Masloch for finding most bugs.

Edouard G. Parmelan for many patches and bug reports

Iain Lea for the Redhat spec file

...and many others
--
Oliver Kurth <oku@masqmail.cx>
http://masqmail.cx/
last change: Feb. 3, 2000