mail server setup questions

[Chad Perrin]

On Thu, Sep 06, 2007 at 11:37:11AM +1000, Norberto Meijome wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Sep 2007 16:52:56 -0400
> "Bob Johnson" <fbsdlists at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > In case I haven't made myself clear, I despise Qmail with a passion. I
> > suppose it is suitable for people who like puzzles (as in "What
> > patches do I need to make this do something useful?" or "What
> > third-party tool do I need to make sense out of these awful log
> > files?") and who don't mind inflicting lots of unnecessary secondary
> > spam on the rest of the world.  Yes, I know there are _supposed_ to be
> > patches that fix that problem, but (a) the one I've seen in action
> > doesn't work very well, and (b) you shouldn't need to apply
> > third-party patches to your mail server to make it do what it is
> > supposed to do in the first place.
> 
> I second all these points. I think it's probably better to use sendmail than
> qmail. Sendmail at least supports most (all?) SMTP / antispam related features,
> it is well documented , and configurable to the extreme (with the caveat that
> its configuration may be a bit daunting to the un-initiated :D).
> 
> I just realised that qmail appears over and over in Linux distros, or at least
> on linux servers i've had to suffer... not sure the relationship there (in
> design / philosophy...)... and I am really NOT wanting to start a flame war.
> Just a thought that crossed my mind as I was reading this thread.

I haven't seen enough production FreeBSD systems set up by others to have
any impressions about whether Linux admins are more likely to use Qmail
than FreeBSD admins.  I do get the impression, however, that the Linux
admins who choose Qmail tend to do so for much the same reason that MS
Windows admins choose Exchange: they think it's easier, that setting it
up is just a plug-and-play, point-and-click sort of exercise.  The fact
that it's sending and receiving emails within a couple hours (starting
from a clean box) seems to be the sum total of their metric for ease of
setup, and all the hassle and annoyance that follows doesn't even enter
into it.

Just as MS Exchange basically requires its own admin, but nobody cares
for purposes of judging how "easy" it is as long as the thing is
minimally running within a couple hours, Qmail is an invitation for
disaster -- but nobody cares as long as they can judge it by its security
and stability statistics in a default (if essentially useless)
configuration, and as long as they can configure it via some kind of
point-and-click web interface.  That's my experience, anyway.

If Qmail is more common among Linux admins, I tend to guess Webmin
probably is as well.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
McCloctnick the Lucid: "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your
time waving your hands and hopping when a rock or a club will do."