Re: tlug: A myriad of mailers

[Rex Walters <rex@example.com>]

>>>>> Chris Sekiya writes:  (on 11 Mar 99)

> Welcome to my killfile.

And Dan Bernstein is considered arrogant and difficult to get along
with?

I'm sorry that Chris has had problems with qmail, but fwiw, in my
personal experience I know far more people who have had difficulty with
sendmail.  I can't quite decide if Chris is sticking his head in the
sand or deliberately sticking a finger in his eye (or elsewhere).

I tried to post a lucid defense of qmail's response to invalid SMTP
(something that's been hashed out time and again on the qmail list).

Chris's reply was "The segfault happened.  Trust Me.  I'm not going to
listen to you anymore."  

I love rational debate.

To his credit Chris *is* volunteering his time administering the tlug
server when no-one else seems willing/able.  I have to wonder, though,
if the lack of volunteers has anything to do with his personal charm and
unilateral, pre-emptive administration practices ("I personally remember
a problem in qmail THEREFORE the tlug server will only run sendmail").

Anyway, to stem any "to advocacy" rants, a final technical summary of my
previous post: qmail 1.03, the production version of qmail for about 9
months, does not segfault when fed invalid SMTP of the 
"MAIL From: badsmtp@example.com" variety.  

Whether or not previous versions did isn't something I'm concerned about
-- I consider this a problem of the "Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do
this" variety.  Worst case a broken smtp implementation at a remote site
(or a malicious teenager with a telnet client) causes a process to die
(segfault or otherwise).  BFD -- well administered sites already know to
use resource limiting throttles like tcpserver or xinetd to prevent
obvious DOS attacks.  Sendmail is a *much* bigger risk, imho.

Regards,
-- 
Rex

P.S. I'm travelling (Mexico City, Canberra, and Sydney, ye gods) for the 
     next 10 days or so -- in the near term my posts will be
     (mercifully, I'm sure) brief and infrequent.
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