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[Bill Moran]

mail25 at bzerk.org wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 10:03:05AM -0400, Mark Frank typed:
> > * On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 05:40:33AM -0500 Jason Dusek wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > I am having a lot of trouble setting up mail. And, perhaps more 
> > > importantly, I am having a lot of trouble figuring what software to 
> > > set-up. Sendmail is standard but buggy, so I imagine that Postfix is a 
> > > better choice.
> > 
> > Just curious.  What sendmail bugs are you referring?  Have you reported
> > them to sendmail.org?
> 
> Probably just hear-say. There's so much bad-mouthing sendmail! Most of
> it by people who got lost in sendmail's many configuration options, but
> instead of reading some docs they drop it, telling everybody they should
> avoid sendmail at all cost.
> 
> Too bad, 'cause to me and many others sendmail is one of the most 
> reliable and compliant MTA's in existance today. And there hasn't been
> a major security problem in years.

I was going to make the same comment ... but I have a small point of
disagreement ...

Despite the fact that sendmail does a good job, is compliant, and really hasn't
had any security problems in quite a while ... there's still one major problem
with it: It's the most difficult thing to configure I've ever seen.

This is not to say that sendmail is impossible to configure.  It's certainly
possible, and there are many people who have sendmail doing exactly what they
want.  It's certainly capable of doing just about anything.  It's just that for
someone who doesn't know how to do it, the learning curve is worse than anything
else I'm aware of (even qmail, which can be a royal PITA to get running).

Postfix (IMHO) is the easiest to configure.  Postfix is an excellent mailer in
its own right, but the ease of configuration may be its single, best attribute.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com