mail server setup questions

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Nikola Lecic
> Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 11:41 PM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt
> Cc: Russell E. Meek; Jim Stapleton; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: mail server setup questions
> 
> 
> On Tue, 4 Sep 2007 23:21:47 -0700
> "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm at toybox.placo.com> wrote:
> 
> [...] 
> > Kind of like the country of Iraq buying a nuclear device - 
> > they don't know what they have, don't know how to build it,
> > and are not qualified at all to use it.
> [...]
> 
> Please save us from these words of wisdom. Your opinions about "them"
> and about "competence" and "collective knowledge" of world states are
> off-topic here. Such arrogancy and ignorance are very miserable.
> 

Your reaction is facinating considering the location implied by
your e-mail reply address.  I can perhaps understand your adversion
to the use of metaphors in language - God know the Serbian propagandists
warped the metaphor beyond the breaking point in your history and
perhaps now, there is a horror of them there that will take generations to
dissipate.

In any case, please rest assured I was not talking about nuclear
weapons or Iraq, merely incompetent admins running mailservers
that were beyond their capabilities.  It was merely a metaphor.  I
would encourage you to get beyond your instinctual knee-jerk
reaction against the metaphor, as it is widely used language device
in virtually all languages and cultures in use by mankind today.

No serious person would ever argue for the proposition that a
non-nuclear country be allowed to purchase nuclear weapons, much
less use them.  As, no serious person should ever argue for
"clueless admins" to run mailservers that they know nothing about.

Never forget when you or anyone sets up a mailserver on the
Internet you are putting a server online that can be used to
cause a tremendous amount of damage to other mailservers on the
Internet.  It is a responsibility that should never be taken
lightly.  Far too many "Windoze admins" do this already.  We
as FreeBSD users do not need to emulate such disgusting behavior.

Jim posted here asking for help, using words and language that
gives serious doubt that he is competent to run a mailserver
of any kind.  It would be irresponsible in the extreme to tell
him to run pell-mell into fielding a system that is way beyond
his capabilities.  His goal should be to gain competence as
well as a mailserver, lest he cause serious problems on the
Internet.  We do NOT need one more misconfigured server on the
Internet that is a spam or virus source.  The best way for him
to do this - and be a responsible network admin - is to start
small, with individual pieces, and learn each subsystem.  The
worst way would be to drop a canned package in that he doesen't
understand.

It is to the list's credit that the vast majority of responses
to Jim were to direct him to the individual packages - NOT to
a "toaster" approach that would likely teach him nothing.

Hopefully next time you will stick to addressing the topic of the
responses and not get hung up on attacking an alliteration or
some other language device that someone might use.


Ted