How to set up Qmail auto reply (Out of the
Office), vacation message manually using .qmail message processing
file
I had to
setup a QMAIL auto reply (Out of the Office)
message on 5 email addresses and since I haven't done it for a
long time it took me a couple 20 minutes to consult Qmail (Life
With Qmail
http://lifewithqmail.org (great website!)
documentation and read a couple of online forum threads until I
finally remembered, how I used to be setting up a vacation message
manually via qmail's
.qmail file.
Of course
Setting qmail auto reply can always be done via
QmailAdmin or VQadmin .. -
Qmail Vpopmail web
frontends however on many Qmail mail servers
Qmailadmin
or/and
VQadmin is absent due to some reason or even on a big
mail servers the server doesn't run Apache at all. Hence it is good
to know how to set qmail vacation message directly via plain SSH
terminal connection and this is why how this article got
born.
So here is how I
enable qmail auto reply "manually", through
.qmail for my email address
info@my-email-domain.com:
1. Set a
/var/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/.qmail file
with the following content:
| /usr/bin/autorespond 86400 3
/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation/message
/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation
2. Create
/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation
directory
linux:~# mkdir -p
/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation/
3. Create
/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation/message
file with auto reply message
First create the message file with
touch command:
linux:~# touch
/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation/message
Then put with
vim or mcedit etc. an
auto-reply vacation
message similar to the sample below:
From: info@cadiainsurance.com
Subject: We have received your message. Thank you!
Dear Customer, we thank you for the interest in our
services.
A member of our team will reply promptly to your enquiry
shortly.
4. Set proper permissions for vacation/message and
.qmail files
/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation/message
and
/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/.qmail
files has to be owned by user/group
vpopmail:vchkpw,
e.g.:
linux:~# chown -R vpopmail:vchkpw
/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/vacation
linux:~# chown vpopmail:vchkpw
/home/vpopmail/domains/my-email-domain.com/info/.qmail
If you are a qmail administration with the requirement to create
auto reply message for employees going on a holiday often
(in a middle sized company office), setting up the
out of the
office auto reply manually one by one is a time consuming,
annoying task and "crazy" task. Therefore some time ago while still
I was employed in a Bulgarian mid-sized company called
Design.BG, I've written a tiny shell script which creates
qmail email users vacation messages by passing few arguments.
Here is
my
create_vpopmail_vacation.sh shell script
Note that this script might have a lot of bugs and is not much
tested, so read it carefully and test it before you put it for
daily use ;)
Happy Hacking! ;)