Guide updated on 29th of February 2016


This guide is largely inspired by the Qmailrocks website. All the credits goes to Eric Siegel, the original author. Indeed, this Debian guide is only an updated version of the original.

As it is now, I've split the debian qmail installation up into several sections which are listed below. Simply start at step 1 and follow it all the way to completion. By the time you reach step 19, you should have a kickass qmail server.

The current version is really near the previous one. It 'll be updated soon with some advices found on the web (notably really good remarks from John M. Simpson)

Before You Start! - When installing qmail, I would STRONGLY recommend that you first conduct a test installation on a test server if you have one available. I cannot stress this enough. If you're new to qmail, chances are you will probably screw the install up the first time through. Do yourself a favor and screw up on a test server that has no importance to you! I had to learn this the hard way. ;)

Pre-installation steps

Installation steps

Optional steps

Color Coded Qmail Installation Key
  Regular Black Text     Qmail installation notes and summaries by the author.
  Bold Black Text     Commands to be run by you, the installer.
  Bold/Regular Red Text    Vital and/or critical information.
  Regular Blue text     Denotes helpful tips and hints or hyperlinks.
  Regular Orange Text     Command line output.
  Bold/Regular green text     Denotes the contents of a file or script.