# qmail startup problems

## McVeigh

```
midas root # /var/qmail/rc

alert: cannot start: unable to read controls

midas root #

```

this is what happens when I try to start qmail.

Did I start it right?  what controls?

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## Nitro

 *McVeigh wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> midas root # /var/qmail/rc
> 
> ...

 

Start it with 

```
/etc/init.d/svscan start
```

  Qmail uses daemontools, think of it kind of like xinetd.   Start one daemon, and it starts the rest.

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## McVeigh

thanks for the reply, is there any docs for gentoo and qmail? I have searched but haven't found any.

The qmail sites I find don't seem to apply to gentoo  :Embarassed: 

EDIT:

example  I can't find the command "qmailctl"

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## Nitro

 *McVeigh wrote:*   

> thanks for the reply, is there any docs for gentoo and qmail? I have searched but haven't found any.
> 
> The qmail sites I find don't seem to apply to gentoo 

 

Did you get it to work?  

I haven't messed with the qmail ebuild yet, but I've helped others.  I personally built qmail from source (on my servers I like to be in control), and I used www.lifewithqmail.org, you might want to browse through that.

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## McVeigh

well I found the

/var/qmail/bin/qmail-showctl

/var/qmail/bin/config-fast

commands

which seemed to setup some filesthat I do find mentioned in life w/ qmail, but how can I test it w/o a qmailctl command?

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## CasimirEffect

I've done a lot of serching and have only found happy people who are smarter than I am. Are there any Gentoo specific instructions for qmail?

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## rac

 *CasimirEffect wrote:*   

> Are there any Gentoo specific instructions for qmail?

 

The ebuilds tell you to run "ebuild config" on them, and also give some commands needed to symlink things so that svscan will start qmail.  What do you want to happen and what is happening?

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## CasimirEffect

I missed that becaused I emerged a lot of things at once. Thanks! It seems to be working now!

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## Woland

Just as a warning to others:  do not emerge qmail, and then just follow the instruction in the Life with Qmail book to install, without following the instructions at the end of the qmail e-build:

```

Please do not forget to run, the following syntax :

 ebuild /var/db/pkg/net-mail/qmail-1.03-r8/qmail-1.03-r8.ebuild config

 This will setup qmail to run out-of-the-box on your system.

 

 To start qmail at boot you have to enable the /etc/init.d/svscan rc file

 and create the following links :

 ln -s /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-send /service/qmail-send

 ln -s /var/qmail/supervise/qmail-smtpd /service/qmail-smtpd

```

You will cry bitter tears if you do---I should know, I am using up my third hankey.

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## tgoodaire

I emerged qmail, followed the instructions to make the symlinks, and then followed through the "Life with Qmail" page. I had some problems with permissions on files and directories, but just about everything is working now. Oh yeah. There was no /var/qmail/alias/ directory created from the ebuild either. Perhaps that's something that should be fixed.

The one problem that I'm still having is that local mail is delivered nicely to ~/Mail/inbox, but it doesn't show up in KMail. Should I be delivering to there, or should I deliver it in mbox format to /var/mail/user ?

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## ventricle

I have emerged qmail, and I have run the required commands (as listed at the end of the emerge), however I still don't have the qmailctl commant - which is listed in the life with qmail doc.?

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## kashani

qmailctl is a script published on lifewithqmail and is not part of the qmail package. You can copy and install it from here.

http://www.lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html#start-qmail

You'll need to scroll down a bit to find it. I installed because that's what I normally use to check the queue, but it'll need some modification on Gentoo to get all the functionality it normally has.

kashani

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## bitzer

For what it's worth, and for anyone who stumbles upon this thread from searching in the future, this page was linked to off of qmail.org.   Would seem to fill the request for "Gentoo Specific Instructions," though I haven't tried them myself:

http://www.skunkworx.org/guides/QmailOnGentoo.txt

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## tecknojunky

 *Woland wrote:*   

> Just as a warning to others:  do not emerge qmail, and then just follow the instruction in the Life with Qmail book to install, without following the instructions at the end of the qmail e-build:
> 
> ```
> 
> Please do not forget to run, the following syntax :
> ...

 

I agree with woland, especially if you got it working on another box.  Simply follow the instructions from LWQ and you'll have a working qmail setup identical to probably 90% of all the qmails in the world.  All the addons for qmails are aware of LWQ and you'll be in known territory.  Using the ebuild makes it harder to know how things are setups and you end up figuring out the ebuild author's point of view of how things should be (like not using svscanboot  :Mad:  ).

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