Mail

[Geert Hendrickx]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 04:53:05PM +0200, 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.
> 
> just .02 euro.

>From what I have heard and read...  sendmail indeed has a serious history of security-issues (as it was not initially designed for the Internet as we know it today), but has had a major code cleanup a while ago, and doesn't run SUID anymore, so it should be much more secure now.  

Anyway, Postfix has been developed as a "security-enhanced but compatible" alternative to sendmail.  And as someone else mentioned already, its configuration is indeed quite straightforward.  

Personally, I would use sendmail on end-user machines (e.g. for use with fetchmail) because it's in the base system, but Postfix for mailservers with more complex configuration or security-concerns.  

Btw, can anyone of the sendmail-guru's tell me how sendmail compares performancewise?  

GH