Re: [vchkpw] Rethinking qmail : was Re: [vchkpw] how use chkuser on "dmz"

[Rick Widmer]

Dave Richardson wrote:
Guys, in the interest of advancing the science of vpopmail, would you 
please consider taking this discussion/argument/difference-of-opinion 
offline?


+1


I'm keenly anxious to see the possible new directions that vpopmail may 
grow given the several threads of recent activity.

Your energy and wisdom applied to that end would be most excellent!


If you are interested in the gory details you should probably be 
watching the vpopmail-devel list too.  I try to keep as much of the 
internals discussion and all the patches over there.



Rick

Re: [vchkpw] Rethinking qmail : was Re: [vchkpw] how use chkuser on "dmz"

[Dave Richardson]

Guys, in the interest of advancing the science of vpopmail, would you 
please consider taking this discussion/argument/difference-of-opinion 
offline?


I'm keenly anxious to see the possible new directions that vpopmail may 
grow given the several threads of recent activity.

Your energy and wisdom applied to that end would be most excellent!

Cheers, Dave.

Re: [vchkpw] Rethinking qmail : was Re: [vchkpw] how use chkuser on "dmz"

[Christopher Chan]

QMAIL was a secure product and a good academic programming model, ten 
years ago. Now, a modern MTA facing millions of emails has completely 
different problems from the ones Bernstein faced. But he made a 
closed architecture, not a modular one, adding a no-sense license.


Hmm...qmail is STILL a secure and a good programming model. I don't 
see how it has become unsecure.


I said "it was" because at that time it was the unique one to be so 
safe. Now that other products give good security, the lack of features 
outperforms the need of security.


I do not see how that makes it a 'was secure'. Even you make the point 
that its problem is the lack of features and not that it has somehow 
become insecure. Features is not the same as security.




Anyway, programming model is horrible, despite of other considerations.


You have not made any qualifying statements on this other than your 
insistence on your opinion. Saying the programming model is horrible 
does not make it so. I have pointed out that the code is readable. Let 
me explain that a bit more. The flow is readily discernible and I doubt 
that is a mark of a poor programming model.




 Perhaps you can enlighten us on that. As for programming model, I 
don't see a problem. The only problem I see is the lack of certain 
capabilities and qmail's current architecture. Actually, not a problem 
with the design of the architecture but the state of it. postfix uses 
the same architecture with certain improvements like persistent 
daemons in the manner of httpd and a more advanced queue manager. If 
postfix had dot-qmail support, it would become rather complete.


You call that "same architecture"?


I don't see why not. One can always swap out the tcpserver and 
qmail-smtpd combination with something else similar to postfix's master 
+ smtpd combination. So it becomes a matter of the components. If that 
does not show that it is the same architecture then I do not know what 
you mean by architecture. One can do the same for qmail-send 
qmail-lspawn qmail-rspawn qmail-local qmail-remote.




QMAIL has a lot of problems; the mail world has changed but QMAIL is 
designed to be impossible to change because of the presunction of 
Bernstein of being a perfect designer.


qmail does not have a lot of problems. Quite bug free and secure :D. 
DJB is a perfect designer. The fact that Wietse uses the same basic 
design speaks for itself. We are only complaining that he has stopped 
and not continued.


If the architecture cannot grow, designer wasn't that good.


Bah! You claim that the architecture cannot grow. I call nonsense on 
your assertion. postfix uses the same basic design, the difference only 
being the components and postfix has demonstrated quite clearly that the 
design is good and efficient one. Just because qmail's components are 
lacking in certain behaviours and features does not mean that the 
architecture design was bad.




QMAIL is no more mantained because Bernstein is prisoner of his wrong 
architecture. He cannot improve it, because he should change all the 
architecture, and none would follow him today on the same licensing 
scheme.


I am sorry but I really doubt you can do any better. Do you plan to 
show us by writing your own MTA?


I've not fear of that. I'll have spare time (I have to work, I'm not 
that rich) I will do.


Funny that. DJB too had to work when he wrote qmail and I believe he is 
still working.




ROTFL. When you manage a software project that has as clean a record 
as qmail with respects to bugs, come back and let us know.


Are you speaking of Open Source or professional projects? I can tell you 
about projects I worked on: transactional systems, telex switching 
systems, and so on. Millions/hundreds thousand lines of code, zero final 
bug (and very few during development) because of a very good design of 
systems.


Great. I await your qmail replacement.



Bug free does not mean anything, when software is hard to change and 
makes easy to add new errors.

And difficult code does not mean good code, as in this case.


You find qmail code to be difficult? Now that is a laugh...I find it 
rather readable compared to other stuff I have looked at.





Not even postfix can claim anything near qmail's record.


Postfix takes the risk to grow, while qmail is perfect (according to 
you) and dead.


Since when did I say it was perfect. I have quite clearly pointed out 
that I am complaining of DJB's lack of continued development of qmail. I 
have gone so far as to advocate postfix in replacement of qmail in a 
wide variety of environments but not a lot on this list. You however 
have called to question not its lack of features/development of features 
but its architecture and programming model without any case for such 
criticisms other than your opinion.

Re: [vchkpw] Rethinking qmail : was Re: [vchkpw] how use chkuser on "dmz"

[tonix (Antonio Nati)]

At 14.14 15/01/2007, you wrote:

People has not the courage to say that Bernstein design and coding 
is horrible.


???

QMAIL was a secure product and a good academic programming model, 
ten years ago. Now, a modern MTA facing millions of emails has 
completely different problems from the ones Bernstein faced. But he 
made a closed architecture, not a modular one, adding a no-sense license.


Hmm...qmail is STILL a secure and a good programming model. I don't 
see how it has become unsecure.


I said "it was" because at that time it was the unique one to be so 
safe. Now that other products give good security, the lack of 
features outperforms the need of security.


Anyway, programming model is horrible, despite of other considerations.

 Perhaps you can enlighten us on that. As for programming model, I 
don't see a problem. The only problem I see is the lack of certain 
capabilities and qmail's current architecture. Actually, not a 
problem with the design of the architecture but the state of it. 
postfix uses the same architecture with certain improvements like 
persistent daemons in the manner of httpd and a more advanced queue 
manager. If postfix had dot-qmail support, it would become rather complete.


You call that "same architecture"?

QMAIL has a lot of problems; the mail world has changed but QMAIL 
is designed to be impossible to change because of the presunction 
of Bernstein of being a perfect designer.


qmail does not have a lot of problems. Quite bug free and secure :D. 
DJB is a perfect designer. The fact that Wietse uses the same basic 
design speaks for itself. We are only complaining that he has 
stopped and not continued.


If the architecture cannot grow, designer wasn't that good.

QMAIL is no more mantained because Bernstein is prisoner of his 
wrong architecture. He cannot improve it, because he should change 
all the architecture, and none would follow him today on the same 
licensing scheme.


I am sorry but I really doubt you can do any better. Do you plan to 
show us by writing your own MTA?


I've not fear of that. I'll have spare time (I have to work, I'm not 
that rich) I will do.


ROTFL. When you manage a software project that has as clean a record 
as qmail with respects to bugs, come back and let us know.


Are you speaking of Open Source or professional projects? I can tell 
you about projects I worked on: transactional systems, telex 
switching systems, and so on. Millions/hundreds thousand lines of 
code, zero final bug (and very few during development) because of a 
very good design of systems.


Bug free does not mean anything, when software is hard to change and 
makes easy to add new errors.

And difficult code does not mean good code, as in this case.


Not even postfix can claim anything near qmail's record.


Postfix takes the risk to grow, while qmail is perfect (according to 
you) and dead.


Regards,

Tonino


Just my 1 eurocent.


Soon I will have my 1 plastic HK Dollar.

Re: [vchkpw] Rethinking qmail : was Re: [vchkpw] how use chkuser on "dmz"

[Christopher Chan]

People has not the courage to say that Bernstein design and coding is 
horrible.


???



QMAIL was a secure product and a good academic programming model, ten 
years ago. Now, a modern MTA facing millions of emails has completely 
different problems from the ones Bernstein faced. But he made a closed 
architecture, not a modular one, adding a no-sense license.


Hmm...qmail is STILL a secure and a good programming model. I don't see 
how it has become unsecure. Perhaps you can enlighten us on that. As for 
programming model, I don't see a problem. The only problem I see is the 
lack of certain capabilities and qmail's current architecture. Actually, 
not a problem with the design of the architecture but the state of it. 
postfix uses the same architecture with certain improvements like 
persistent daemons in the manner of httpd and a more advanced queue 
manager. If postfix had dot-qmail support, it would become rather complete.


postfix code is however harder to follow than qmail's.



Plugin is slow, and does not let do anything important, just side 
checks. The core is untouched, and here the problem is the core.


Yes, the core can do with some improvements for certain scenarios.



QMAIL has a lot of problems; the mail world has changed but QMAIL is 
designed to be impossible to change because of the presunction of 
Bernstein of being a perfect designer.


qmail does not have a lot of problems. Quite bug free and secure :D. DJB 
is a perfect designer. The fact that Wietse uses the same basic design 
speaks for itself. We are only complaining that he has stopped and not 
continued.


QMAIL is no more mantained because Bernstein is prisoner of his wrong 
architecture. He cannot improve it, because he should change all the 
architecture, and none would follow him today on the same licensing scheme.


I am sorry but I really doubt you can do any better. Do you plan to show 
us by writing your own MTA?


No one follows him on the licensing because corporations have made sure 
that things have become so muddied that no one would risk not specifying 
a license...but others have taken it a step further and made licenses to 
'fight' back like the GPL. I find it ludicrous that software is 
'licensed and not sold'. I can very do anything I like with a book I 
bought and that goes for software.




Qmail is only an academic example of programming, that in real life 
should never be used by expert programmers.


ROTFL. When you manage a software project that has as clean a record as 
qmail with respects to bugs, come back and let us know. Not even postfix 
can claim anything near qmail's record.




Just my 1 eurocent.



Soon I will have my 1 plastic HK Dollar.

Re: [vchkpw] Rethinking qmail : was Re: [vchkpw] how use chkuser on "dmz"

[tonix (Antonio Nati)]

At 18.16 11/01/2007, you wrote:

Look at QMAIL-SPP ( 
http://qmail-spp.sourceforge.net/ ).
It provides a plugin for vpopmail and gets away from this patching 
situation.  The idea is great, the implementation is good.
A mix of this and the existing patches you may have is probably the 
best way to go.


QMAIL-SPP is an old style answer to an old style problem.

People has not the courage to say that Bernstein design and coding is horrible.

QMAIL was a secure product and a good academic programming model, ten 
years ago. Now, a modern MTA facing millions of emails has completely 
different problems from the ones Bernstein faced. But he made a 
closed architecture, not a modular one, adding a no-sense license.


QMAIL-SPP has the same problems of qmail, and from my point of view 
it uses a terrible approach speaking about performances and 
impossible sophistication of wanted features.



In the end, you make a perl script or something on the RCPT command that:
 a. matches a line with the domain of the RCPT command in the 
smtproutes file (making sure it has access to read it)

 b. if it exists, then opens a socket connection and begins connecting
 c. returns an accept, reject, or defer based on the output of the 
program- also possibly adds headers accordingly.


The plugin infrastrucutre is really key.  It's not as fast due to 
performance hits of launching these plugins, but it still makes it 
faster than many applications.


Plugin is slow, and does not let do anything important, just side 
checks. The core is untouched, and here the problem is the core.


It makes adding plugins as easy as adding a line to the text 
file.  Think about even just a sleep() command in a shell file could 
be easily implemented.


qmail has been around for a long time and hence has series of 
feature additions upon feature additions.  But remember, these 
patches aren't fixing problems with qmail.  There are very few 
actual PROBLEMS with qmail, and they're relatively minor and things 
that softlimit and equivalent fix.


QMAIL has a lot of problems; the mail world has changed but QMAIL is 
designed to be impossible to change because of the presunction of 
Bernstein of being a perfect designer.


 People add patches because they want features.  Because there is 
no active development by the creator these have to be added themselves.


QMAIL is no more mantained because Bernstein is prisoner of his wrong 
architecture. He cannot improve it, because he should change all the 
architecture, and none would follow him today on the same licensing scheme.


You add the features you want in your qmail installation.  Others 
have differing opinions as to what should be added.


If you want to manipulate simple perl/shell/C scripts to SMTP 
conversations, install qmail-spp.


Qmail doesn't have a need to change.  It's still doing the task it 
was intended to very well.  If another product suits your needs 
better, by all means go to it, but that doesn't mean qmail is 
bad.  Also, patches allow you to add those features that others have 
wanted.  In the old days, you had to program them yourself :)


Qmail is only an academic example of programming, that in real life 
should never be used by expert programmers.


Just my 1 eurocent.

Tonino


-M

- Original Message 
From: tonix (Antonio Nati) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: vchkpw@inter7.com
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 6:31:40 AM
Subject: [vchkpw] Rethinking qmail : was Re: [vchkpw] how use chkuser on "dmz"


I'm thinking to extend chkuser, and add an smtp fake delivery for
checking recipients existance on end systems (i.e. when domains are
external and use me as proxy SMTP).

But I'm really tired to fight with qmail. Bernstein programming is
accademic and heavy to use, license is criminal. Programming with
patches over patches is painful. There is no fun to put new features
on this old and overextimated product. You have to run several
chained programs just to make an SMTP acceptance...

I feel is time to migrate to another product, or is there anyone
available to start a new project, that should rewrite a little by
little qmail, and free all of us from this criminal license?

Project should start with a "programmed way" to add new features and
patch, then making a decent "configure", then starting to write new
libraries and then substituting the old code, until we have a free
mail system. Of course vpopmail would be a library integrated in this
new product.

I have thrown the first stone.

Tonino

At 00.25 11/01/2007, you wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>I have this setup : mail coming to relay server located in DMZ, and
>this server is relaying x domains to internal LAN mail server.
>Im receiving lot of unwanted mails for nonexistent addresses.
>
>Ho I can handle it ? Chkuser is working fine when are domains on
>server, but how I can "check" user existency on remote server ?
>FYI: rsync of passwd.cdb is ok, but how check against aliases ?
>
>Please, I ne

Re: [vchkpw] Rethinking qmail : was Re: [vchkpw] how use chkuser on "dmz"

[Michael Krieger]

Look at QMAIL-SPP ( http://qmail-spp.sourceforge.net/ ).
It provides a plugin for vpopmail and gets away from this patching situation.  
The idea is great, the implementation is good.
A mix of this and the existing patches you may have is probably the best way to 
go.

In the end, you make a perl script or something on the RCPT command that: 
 a. matches a line with the domain of the RCPT command in the smtproutes file 
(making sure it has access to read it)
 b. if it exists, then opens a socket connection and begins connecting
 c. returns an accept, reject, or defer based on the output of the program- 
also possibly adds headers accordingly.

The plugin infrastrucutre is really key.  It's not as fast due to performance 
hits of launching these plugins, but it still makes it faster than many 
applications.

It makes adding plugins as easy as adding a line to the text file.  Think about 
even just a sleep() command in a shell file could be easily implemented.

qmail has been around for a long time and hence has series of feature additions 
upon feature additions.  But remember, these patches aren't fixing problems 
with qmail.  There are very few actual PROBLEMS with qmail, and they're 
relatively minor and things that softlimit and equivalent fix.  People add 
patches because they want features.  Because there is no active development by 
the creator these have to be added themselves.  You add the features you want 
in your qmail installation.  Others have differing opinions as to what should 
be added.

If you want to manipulate simple perl/shell/C scripts to SMTP conversations, 
install qmail-spp.

Qmail doesn't have a need to change.  It's still doing the task it was intended 
to very well.  If another product suits your needs better, by all means go to 
it, but that doesn't mean qmail is bad.  Also, patches allow you to add those 
features that others have wanted.  In the old days, you had to program them 
yourself :)

-M

- Original Message 
From: tonix (Antonio Nati) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: vchkpw@inter7.com
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 6:31:40 AM
Subject: [vchkpw] Rethinking qmail : was Re: [vchkpw] how use chkuser on "dmz"


I'm thinking to extend chkuser, and add an smtp fake delivery for 
checking recipients existance on end systems (i.e. when domains are 
external and use me as proxy SMTP).

But I'm really tired to fight with qmail. Bernstein programming is 
accademic and heavy to use, license is criminal. Programming with 
patches over patches is painful. There is no fun to put new features 
on this old and overextimated product. You have to run several 
chained programs just to make an SMTP acceptance...

I feel is time to migrate to another product, or is there anyone 
available to start a new project, that should rewrite a little by 
little qmail, and free all of us from this criminal license?

Project should start with a "programmed way" to add new features and 
patch, then making a decent "configure", then starting to write new 
libraries and then substituting the old code, until we have a free 
mail system. Of course vpopmail would be a library integrated in this 
new product.

I have thrown the first stone.

Tonino

At 00.25 11/01/2007, you wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>I have this setup : mail coming to relay server located in DMZ, and
>this server is relaying x domains to internal LAN mail server.
>Im receiving lot of unwanted mails for nonexistent addresses.
>
>Ho I can handle it ? Chkuser is working fine when are domains on
>server, but how I can "check" user existency on remote server ?
>FYI: rsync of passwd.cdb is ok, but how check against aliases ?
>
>Please, I need some pointing where to look at. i fit is possible done
>by chkuser or another way  (qmail-ldap)
>
>Thank you
>
>Peter M.

Re: [vchkpw] Rethinking qmail : was Re: [vchkpw] how use chkuser on "dmz"

[Alessio Cecchi]

Alle 12:31, giovedì 11 gennaio 2007, tonix (Antonio Nati) ha scritto:
> I'm thinking to extend chkuser, and add an smtp fake delivery for
> checking recipients existance on end systems (i.e. when domains are
> external and use me as proxy SMTP).
>
> But I'm really tired to fight with qmail. Bernstein programming is
> accademic and heavy to use, license is criminal. Programming with
> patches over patches is painful. There is no fun to put new features
> on this old and overextimated product. You have to run several
> chained programs just to make an SMTP acceptance...
>
> I feel is time to migrate to another product, or is there anyone
> available to start a new project, that should rewrite a little by
> little qmail, and free all of us from this criminal license?
>
> Project should start with a "programmed way" to add new features and
> patch, then making a decent "configure", then starting to write new
> libraries and then substituting the old code, until we have a free
> mail system. Of course vpopmail would be a library integrated in this
> new product.

Hello tonix, hello all

also i thinks it's time to create a new MTA compatibles with qmail (but more 
important is vpopmail). The only motivation for use qmail today is vpopmail 
and related tool (qmailadmin, vqadmin,...).

Patch over patch isn't a good way to procede.

Bye