A successful QMR Qmail installation requires certain packages be installed and certain configurations be present on your server. I've put together this page to provide a general checklist for visitors to use before they begin the installation. Keep in mind that, since setups will vary from server to server, you may find some requirements that are not listed here. This list is by no means a finished list, so if you find a requirement that you feel is vital and is not present on this page, please feel free to let me know.

How much disk space should I have available on my server?

The following is a GENERAL estimate. Acutal needs may vary from person to person and machine to machine.

A safe amount of disk space would be about 80-90MB. This includes the download of the qmailrocks.tar.gz software bundle and it's extraction. After a successfull installation, the total amount of needed space for a safely operating mail server could be brought down to about 15MB after the qmailrocks.tar.gz content is removed.

If your server is multiple partitions:

/ partition: About 70MB.

/var partition: About 15MB, although this will change as "/var/qmail/vpopmail" will be the place in which all e-mail is stored for all domains.

Some free advise: If the 80-90MB of estimated needed space is asking alot from your server, you might want to reconsider whether or not to use that server as a mail server. A mail server that is tight on disk space is a recipe for trouble. Nothing's more idiotic than some guy with a 2gb drive trying to build a full mail server. Just my opinion

What type of base installation does the QMR Solaris 9 start off with?

For my installation, I started off with a basic installation of Solaris 9 using the initial Solaris 9 install disk and then the 2 Solaris 9 software disks that go with it. I selected the default software setup. Basically, I stuck in Disk 1 and installed Solaris, then stuck in Software Disk 1 and then Software Disk 2 when told. I made no customizations except for when I setup the network connection, of course. This was all done on a Sun Sparc Ultra 5 with 128Mb of RAM and 4.6Gb hard drive.

What additional software packages should I already have installed on my server?

I added the following packages to my base system. Except where mentioned otherwise, I acquired all packages from ftp.sunfreeware.com. To access ftp.sunfreeware.com, simply use the following info:

Host: ftp.sunfreeware.com
Username: anonymous
Password: [email protected]

Anyway, I downloaded the latest versions of the following software and the installed them using the "pkgadd" utility.All of the following packages can be found at ftp.sunfreeware.com:

gzip - for unpacking software

gcc - for compiling software

diffutils - used for applying patches to software

automake - for building software

autoconf - for building software

coreutils - for general ease of install. Makes your system more Linux-like, therefore more friendly, therefore more cooperative.

wget - for downloading software via the web.

Apache 2.0.49 - The Apache weserver, duh. 1.3.x will work too.

Perl - I would strongly recommend that you install the sunfreeware version of Perl. It's a gcc compiled version and will therefore give you much less trouble when installing the needed modules later on. On my systen, I uninstalled the default Sun Perl install that came with Solaris 9 and then installed the latest version from ftp.sunfreeware.com

What software packages should NOT be installed?

1. Postfix - If it's installed on your server, you will need to either uninstall it or disable it.

2. Any POP service - This includes Qpopper or any POP service that may be running out of xinetd or inetd. If your're server has a POP service running, you will need to disable it.

3. Any SMTP services

What about Sendmail? It's ok to have Sendmail installed, because we'll uninstall it during the qmail installation.

What Perl modules should be installed?

This list may vary depending on your setup, but here goes:

Digest::SHA1
Digest::HMAC
Net::DNS
Time::HiRes
HTML::Tagset
HTML::Parser

Again, these modules will be much easier to install if you have a gcc compiled version of Perl on your system rather than the default Sun Perl installation.

I'm am almost positive that someone out there will need more, so if you come across any other needed modules please drop me a line.

I'm running a firewall on my server. What ports should I open?

IMPORTANT NOTE: Keep in mind the the following ports are what are required to be open for only the QMR install. More than likely, a fully functioning webserver is going to have more ports open for various other services. So, do not use the port listing below to construct a NEW firewall without first determining what other ports you will need to open. If you are are interested in constructing a complete firewall for your server, check out the iptables tutorial at http://www.iptablesrocks.org.

Outbound ports (tcp)

25 - SMTP
110 - POP services
143 - IMAP
783 - Spamassassin
993 - IMAPS

Inbound Ports (tcp)

25 - SMTP
80 - HTTP
110 - POP services
143 - IMAP
443 - HTTPS
783 - Spamassassin
993 - IMAPS

Environment Settings:

vi /etc/profile

Add the following line:

PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin://bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin/:/usr/local/ssl/bin

CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/include -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/ssl/include -I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.2/include -I/usr/java/include -I/usr/sfw/include"

vi /etc/default/login & /etc/default/su

Add the following lines:

PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin://bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin/:/usr/local/ssl/bin

CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/include -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/ssl/include -I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.2/include -I/usr/java/include -I/usr/sfw/include"

Run the following commands to set up the correct library paths:

crle -u -v -l /usr/lib:/lib:/etc/lib:/usr/local/lib:/usr/local/ssl/lib:/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.2/lib:/usr/share/lib: \ /usr/xpg4/lib:/usr/sfw/lib:/usr/java/lib:/usr/ccs/lib:/usr/sadm/lib:/etc/security/lib:/opt/csw/lib

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib

If /usr/ccs/bin/cc does not exist after installing all need packages above, add the following symlink to your system:

ln -s /usr/local/bin/gcc /usr/ccs/bin/cc

Proceed to the Qmailrocks.org Qmail Installation