Hello dbmail, dmc> It seems redundent to have both dbmail and the MTA check for the dmc> validity of the domain name and users.
dbmail isn't checking the validity - Postfix is, in this case. dbmail just delivers it to the mailboxes. It also provides the tools (the alias table) for Postfix to determine who to process mail for dmc> I can understand the problems with spam relays, but can't you dmc> just make an MTA that will not deliver mail outside of dbmail? An dmc> MTA that only delivers to dbmail would be smaller and quicker. Or dmc> would this be against the SMTP protocal. From a solutions dmc> provider perspective who really only cares about the people with dmc> paid accounts on their system, it seems logical to not even dmc> bounce mail. Partially because I think spamer's can use the dmc> method to differentiate between real addresses, but also because dmc> it takes up resources that don't benefit the customer. Not bouncing mail that is undeliverable may be a technical violation of the RFCs, but I'm not so concerned about that. I'm more concerned about accepting 200 150K virus messages addressed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (a non-existant address that might appear on a web page for spam bots to find), when they can be rejected without as much bandwidth by the MTA, simply by checking the alias table. dmc> It seems to me that the only required and useful purpose of an dmc> MTA is to pipe the data to dbmail. What other purposes does a MTA dmc> have? Could someone just write a simple perl script that binds to dmc> the smtp port and accepted connections and pipes the data to dmc> dbmail-smtp? The MTA is separate from dbmail for a very good reason - there are some very efficient and secure MTAs already out there, which years of testing behind them, that handle RFCs, spam, etc., without the dbmail project spending a year trying to reach that level. "A simple Perl script" could handle the basics of SMTP, certainly. But it starts getting rather elaborate when you want to include the features of a modern MTA. dbmail is an MDA (mail delivery agent). dmc> From a newbie's perspective to dbmail, the most challenging part dmc> to installing dbmail is figuring out how to interface it with dmc> your current MTA. I'm convinced that support would be easier if a dmc> simple dbmail MTA was provided in the distribution. To be honest, I haven't looked at the dbmail install documentation in a LONG time. However, I know that integrating it with Postfix is simple... I've documented it in a single message on several occasions. It's a relatively simple cookbook. The hardest part is getting Postfix to understand MySQL or Postgres, which means compiling it... since no distribution I've seen comes with SQL built into Postfix (Postgres support requires patches available from another site). This is really the same for any MTA, if you want it to fully utilize things like POP-before-SMTP authentication, or the ability to add/remove domains at will, without restarting the mail server. -- Best regards, Jeff mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
