Les Mikesell wrote:
On Mon, 2006-02-20 at 11:38, Robin Bowes wrote:
Les Mikesell said the following on 02/20/2006 05:16 PM:
Qmail has caused me enough pain in the past that I'd never run it by
choice again although qpsmtpd solves one of it's problems.
Care to elaborate on that? What pain have you suffered, and which
problem does qpsmtpd solve?
The biggest problem with stock qmail is that it accepts everything
at the smtp level then generates bounces for anything it can't
deliver. For the last several years 'dictionary attacks' have
been a common spam/virus delivery approach so you end up with
a huge queue of bounces to undeliverable sender addresses that
clog up your own outbound deliveries. Qpsmtpd fixes this
one by checking allowed recipients before accepting a message.
Not by accepting all messages only on listed valid domains. But yes
that was a problem; just as it was a problem for stock sendmail in the 90's.
The other problem may not be so bad for people where the
destinations are randomly distributed, but my servers are
in remote offices, mostly with expensive private frame-relay
links and the bulk of email use is to groups of people at
one or a few other locations. Qmail will always send a
separate copy of every message to each recipient even if
they are on the same destination host. So, if someone
sends a big file to a large group of people (which my users
often do), it hogs the bandwidth of that office link long
enough for people to complain. This can also be a problem
on an internet link if you have a limited uplink rate. Other
mailers would group the recipients to the same next-hop
destination.
For ppl to complain? Don't buy that at all. On a frame? Sorry but
going to call you on that.
And of course there is the personal issue of having to
learn yet another complicated way of doing things which
wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the time you waste
on the problems with no solution.
Ok a sendmail man is complaining that qmail/qpsmtpd is complicated.
But again that is the point isn't it. You have to learn the step by
step system to do something.
That is the problem; you don't know what you are doing you have to learn
a "another complicated way of doing things."
If you knew what you were doing there would be no such thing as "another
complicated way of doing things".
Sendmail isn't complicated; nor is postfix, exim, or qmail. I can see
how if you are missing that understanding it would be.
Perhaps you would be happier in a different field.
Topaz M. Bott
