On May 30, 2008, at 10:39 AM, DAve wrote:
That so much time and effort is spent telling everyone how bad qmail
is still amazes me.
Is it still the case that qmail does not reject mail during SMTP
transaction, but instead will do an "accept and then later bounce"?
If this is still true, then I don't care if qmail turns out to be a
great way to manage your mail server. It is a terrible network citizen.
Anyway, here are my personal prejudices about MTAs:
Sendmail: There was a time when I would set things up for clients
with sendmail because if I got hit by a bus, there were more people
around with sendmail skills then exim skills. Also there was a time
when only sendmail did milters. (And of course there was a time when
there was only sendmail). But my feeling about sendmail has always
been that it was designed backwards in that things that should have
been hard coded (parsing 822 addresses) were done in the configuration
file and things that should have been configurable (throttling
intervals) were hard coded.
For someone with a simple set-up using FreeBSD, sendmail may be the
best choice still because it is already there. Likewise for someone
who wants to have their MTA to factor numbers or solve the towers of
hanoi, sendmail is for them.
exim: If I were setting up a large complicated installation for say an
ISP or a mail hosting system, exim is what I would use. I've heard
people say that they didn't understand the configuration file, but I
don't see what the problem is. It is straight forward and direct.
You just need to remember that in some sections of the configuration
file, the order of directives matter. exim also has this built-in
procmail replacement (exim filters) in its mail delivery. Of course,
sieve has largely replaced the need for this.
postfix: This would be my first recommendation to someone starting
from the beginning for most sites. If there is no legacy need for
sendmail, and we are not talking about very large and complex
arrangements requiring exim, then postfix solid, reasonably flexible,
easy to set up and probably now has a user base to rival sendmail.
I have never managed a qmail, Lotus Notes or MS Exchange system. But
my MTAs have had to interact with them. I feel that they should never
be allowed to face the Internet. They are just too loose in their
interpretations of standards and conventions.
-j
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