----- Original Message -----
From: "Colin Humphreys" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Alan Lee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, December 29, 2000 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: [SLUG] Email Server
> If you are at all concerned about security, then you really only have
> two choices.... qmail or postfix.
sendmail is fine damnit. Just don't run a version with known
vunerabilities, and keep an eye open for advisories [like any good sysadmin
should].
> Qmail is very different, but I like it. The licence it is under, makes
> binary distribution basically impossible, but if you follow one of the
> howtos its pretty straight forward. There are addons if you would like
> /etc/aliases support and the like. I would suggest courier-imap for
> imap, imaps, pop and pops. vpopmail can automate virtual domains for
> you, and qmail-admin provides a web admin interface. sqwebmail gives you
> web-mail. (And if you are feeling particularly keen, wrap your Maildir
> directories up in a Resierfs, for some excelent performance)
Bwargh. If I hear another "qmail is good" rant, I'm gonna barf. I'm not
going to dispute smail, postfix or exim, or any other mailer I have no
experience with.
qmail is not good. qmail is disgusting. Why?
qmail is incrediably network inefficent[1].
qmail does address aliases in a truely disgusting manner (whatever happened
to just using /etc/mail/aliases and ~/.forward, hmm?). Having to create
'users' just to contain mail alias folders is just plain stupid.
The `mailfolders' message storage scheme is just plain filesystem
unfriendly[2].
qmail's smtpd via inetd is inefficent, making you use the author's silly
tcpserver thing (which is just as bad IMO). More cruft to install. :/
When under heavy mail loads, qmail will happily blow a single processor PIII
system load up to 60+. This basically renders loadaverage monitoring
useless.
All this said and done, qmail's only redeeming feature is that it flushes
its spools moderately quickly. Mind you, in my eyes - thats its only
redeeming feature.
[1] The "Lets send out multiple recipiants as individual envelopes" idea
is just plain stupid.
[2] unless you're running your mail spool on reiserfs, which is NOT
recommended given that reiser is still not "stable".
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