Re: [tlug] mail server recommendations

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Brett" == Brett Robson <brett@example.com> writes:

    Brett> I'd like to go with the most popular mainly to develop
    Brett> useful skills. Unless someone can give a good reason not to
    Brett> I'll go with the most popular.

Sendmail is probably most common, but decidedly unpopular. ;-)

Executive summary:

sendmail:  the fusion bomb of MTAs.  If you can't kill it with sendmail,
           consider running away from it.  Now.  If you can kill it with
           _less_ than sendmail, why risk a Tokaimura on _your_ server?

qmail:     distributed, secure, fast.  See www.linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#djb
           for why you shouldn't use it, despite its high quality.

postfix:   distributed, secure, fast.  An MTA using the same sensible
           architecture as qmail, written by someone as competent as DJB.

smail:     an obsolete MTA, intended to replace sendmail, similar to exim.

exim:      a monolithic (sendmail-style) MTA with readable configuration
           files that don't require two layers of interpretation
           between the admin and the daemon

For practical purposes, most people who use sendmail have
approximately the same degree of useful administrative skill as an
MCSE.  You don't actually configure sendmail (that's like slopping
fissionables around in a bucket), you choose from a menu of common
preconfigured options.  sendmail.com

qmail is controversial, but is a high-performance smtpd daemon highly
popular in certain circles.  Not open source, although source is
available.  If you think you might want to go consulting in setting up
mail servers, this is a good one to have in your bag of tricks.

smail used to be widely used (Slackware recommended it and Debian
installed it by default), but it suffers from the same design problems
that sendmail does (ie, it's a complex monolithic server with a huge
array of options and features) without doing everything that sendmail
does.  Although my main mailserver still runs smail, I'd say stay away
from it.

Postfix is written and maintained by Wietse Venema.  If I need to say
more, then you're not ready to maintain Internet servers yet.  ;-)
Seriously, Venema is a ranking Internet security expert, author of the
poor man's firewall (ie, tcp-wrappers), as well as many firewall tools.
www.postfix.org.

Exim is fairly popular monolithic MTA, similar to smail in many ways.
If you're thinking about using smail, think more about exim.  www.exim.org

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
 My nostalgia for Icon makes me forget about any of the bad things.  I don't
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