Virtual domains and qmail (Re: [Techtalk] multiple domains, single server)

[Mary]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2002, Malcolm-Rannirl wrote:
> Configuring inbound mail is fairly easy, just set up the mail server
> to accept mail for both domains. As long as the usernames don't
> overlap in incompatible ways (which is relatively simple to ensure in
> this case), it should deliver local mail correctly.

This is not relevant to your question, but if you configure one or both
domains explicitly as a "virtual host"[1], as distinct from "one of the
names for this machine", you can have overlapping usernames - ie
bob at example.com goes to bob, bob at example.net goes to john.

If you configure both domains as "one of the names for this machine",
mail to jane at example.com and jane at example.net will both go to the jane
account.

I'm not quite sure from this that you knew this, apologies if you did.

Another cute thing: qmail's dot files allow users to configure their own
virtual domains too. Normally I can specify things like ~/.qmail-example
controlling the delivery of mary-example@ or ~/.qmail-suggestion
controlling the delivery of mary-suggestion@ and ~/.qmail-default
controlling the delivery of other mary[-whatever] addresses.

But if the sysadmin configures ~/.qmail-example as controlling the
example.com subdomain, then ~/.qmail-example-bob controls the delivery of
bob at example.com, ~/.qmail-example-jane controls the delivery of
jane at example.com and so on. It's quite a handy way to give users control
of their own virtual domain's incoming delivery.

-Mary

[1] Terms may vary by MTA. The "virtual" thing seems to be a keyword.