Comments on: OpenBSD SMTPD

By: Edward

Edward — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:49:07 +0000

@Jeff Bailey, May 27th, 2009 at 8:10 pm

Wait a minute – you think that the configuration for syntax Exim is ‘really irregular’ and that sendmail in comparison is ‘elegant’ ?

Are you on crack?

By: mneptok

mneptok — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:23:54 +0000

Gilles,

De rien, c’est ma plaisir!

Merci bien a tu pour ton nouveau SMTPD! Sendmail est ma bete noire.

By: Jeff Bailey

Jeff Bailey — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:10:53 +0000

Nothing wrong with sendmail. Exim is a horridly-written replacement of it: The syntax in the config files are really irregular and the default Debian setup concatinates a bunch of files together so that the errors show up in completely unrelated locations.

Postfix is a nice simple MTA, but I found that when I tried it last (about 5 years ago) it just didn’t have the features for header rewriting, mail routing, spam filtering, and such for even a medium-sized mail hub for 100 people with a variety of servers feeding it mail.

Sendmail on the other hand combines the elegance of both of these. A sendmail config file is rarely more than 5 or 6 lines long until some new feature is needed. At that point, you have access to databases to store information, a language that allows really fine tuned manipulation of email flows and rewrites, and debugging tools that allow you to see the flow of email from beginning to end.

And the really lovely part? Sendmail has had *all* of this since the early 90’s when I started using it. It holds up well under ridiculous load, has a response upstream and all of the other lovely goodness.

I’ve never heard a complaint about Sendmail that didn’t come from someone who’d actually used a version that didn’t come with SunOS (or from someone who’d never used it at all and points to things that aren’t the human-usable config files)

By: Gilles

Gilles — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:24:38 +0000

Thanks for your blog entry

By: nona

nona — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:01:14 +0000

I’ve always found courier-mta to be rather straight forward. Easier than sendmail / exim, for sure. More versatile than qmail too. GPL3 licensed. But I’m definitely not against the idea of an even better SMTPD.

By: Colin

Colin — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:28:33 +0000

Postfix just works, is powerful and secure. Who cares if it’s not GPL-licenced ? It’s still free software.

By: C.M

C.M — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:35:13 +0000

What about Lamson? It’s GPLv3 and written in Python by Zed Shaw. http://lamsonproject.org/

By: alex

alex — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:08:33 +0000

postfix will suit all your needs. opensmtpd will never suit production needs and not for a production masqmail is more then enough.

openbsd just love to reinvent bicycles arguing that they are saving world.

By: jdub

jdub — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:33:51 +0000

Wait, why do you care whether or not your MTA is GPL compatible?

(Exim is the Perl of MTAs. Postfix is the Python. I tend towards the regularised and direct nature of Postfix.)

By: Nat

Nat — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:55:31 +0000

Man, you’re just too picky, why don’t you add on 6) Is thoroughly documented and 7) Has stable releases. You ask for too much.