Okay, so you got me on the speed aspect. Good point! As for security, that
has to be checked. Sendmail had many exploits, they are fixed now, and the
program is under scrutiny so it doesn't happen again. Postfix is new, and
had its security problems too (world-writable maildrop in all 98
versions). Maybe there are other hidden problems, we'll see in the future.
As for configuration, maybe it's more simple when you edit the config
files by hand, but remember that Linuxconf makes it really easy to
configure sendmail. I hope someone builds a Linuxconf module for Postfix,
that would make it even more attractive. (No, I don't have the time right
now, neither does Jacques Gelinas ;-)
Jean-Michel Dault
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Lars Nordin wrote:
> Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 18:52:26 -0500
> From: Lars Nordin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [expert] Linux Mail Server Synchronisation
>
> On Wed, 01 Mar 2000, you wrote:
> > Why use Postfix? It is funded by IBM and they don't even use it:
> > Need proof it's related to IBM? On the Postfix web site:
> > "Postfix is the freeware project that I started during my sabattical year
> > in the USA while visiting IBM T.J. Watson Research. I am grateful to IBM
> > for the opportunity to write this software and for their permission to
> > give it away."
>
> What do you expect? We are talking about IBM here.
> BTW They did initially fund it but now it is completely out of their hands -
> Weitse and other concerned users maintain it not IBM.
>
> > Besides, the official release is a BETA release...
>
> If you follow the postfix mailing list (a fairly busy one) you'll see that
> Weitse always labels it a BETA release but hundreds of sites use it.
> I don't have numbers to back that up but talk to the folks that maintain the
> download sites and they could give you a better number of users.
>
>
> > I have Sendmail on all my servers sending and receiving millions of
> > messages per day, ... [snip] ... don't even know how I could implement all
> > those features using Postfix.
>
> You probably can't but that isn't what Postfix was designed for - e-mail
> hosting for companies and ISPs. They may have uucp working with but that wasn't
> part of the original plan. Granted, postfix hasn't existed half as long as
> sendmail but that is good and bad.
>
> > So, please explain me what's so hot about Postfix. Quite frankly, I don't
> > get it. I don't say Postfix is bad, but I would like to have concrete,
> > documented reasons that could convince someone to switch to Postfix.
>
> First, trying getting a new sysadmin to configure postfix and then sendmail
> which will they say is easier to understand and configure?
> I recieved a testimonial from a sysadmin that "postfix ran 3 times faster on
> half the hardware". As I said before postfix is a lot newer and the good side
> is that has been designed with security and speed in mind - sendmail can't
> claim that.
>
> Ask on the postfix mailing list about how they like it (this will be biased)
> but also on newsgroups/mailing lists for qpopper/wu-imapd/cyrus-imapd and find
> out what they use and how they like it.
>
> I personally don't hate sendmail but I do think that configuring it is a big
> pain in the butt.
>
> --
> Lars Nordin
> Noble Systems Corporation
>
