Re: MTA Suggestion
On Sun, 9 Nov 1997, Tim Ferrell wrote:
> > there's also the 'minor' problem that only a few MUAs (i don't know of
> > one except for qmail-popper) will work with qmail's new maildir format.
> >
>
> Actually this is not entirely true... You can set up qmail to use mbox
> files - but as you point out, the author strongly discourages this. NFS
> issues aside, I do not care much for maildir.
yes, the debian qmail package in experimental/ even uses them by
default. only problem is that a user's main mailbox file is in the WRONG
place, in ~/Mailbox rather than /var/spool/mail/<username> where it
belongs.
I still don't know of any MUAs which will read mail from either maildir
or ~/Mailbox. admittedly, configuring pine or elm to read ~/Mailbox
rather than the usual spool dir is pretty simple....but that requires
every user on the system to reconfigure their mail client.
> > but the biggest problem with qmail is the author's attitude.
>
> The sad thing is that it is often difficult for most people to separate
> genuine issues from personal crusades...
i see the author's attitude as being a genuine issue - his arrogance
prevents him from being able to produce software which can be used by
people with conflicting (and equally valid) ideas about how the mail
system should work.
I prefer to use software written by authors who are responsive to user's
needs.
> > finally, qmail is non-free. debian CAN'T use it as the default MTA.
>
> Why is it non-free?
because you can't distribute modified source, modified binaries, or even
pre-compiled binaries without special approval from the author. price is
probably the least important factor in what makes a program free - the
freedom is in freedom to modify and distribute, not in zero cost.
> Anyhow, I will stick with sendmail, despite its complexity - it is a
> known quantity and does what *I* like... ;-)
me too. i look at other MTAs from time to time, just to keep up with
alternative ways of doing things, but i haven't yet found a compelling
reason to switch away from sendmail. vmail sounds like it will be good when
it's released, but that was still in the design stage last time i looked at
the vmail web pages (a few months ago...i'll dig up the url if you're
interested).
personally, i think that sendmail is actually simpler to configure than
smail or exim....or more precisely, debian's sendmailconfig script can
configure a system which will meet the needs of <wild guess> 99% </wild
guess> users. run sendmailconfig, answer a few questions, and you end up
with a sendmail.cf file which works. if you need something more complex,
you can either edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc or /etc/sendmail.cf directly.
i know that debian's smail has a similar config script - i used to run
smail a few years ago, before i switched to sendmail - and it's very
useful too. I just find the million-and-one directories and files a lot
more confusing than a single .mc or .cf file.
sendmail also happens to be the best documented MTA around - there's at
least 2 or 3 good books devoted to sendmail. this was one of the reason
i finally gave up on smail - i couldn't find any books on smail anywhere
(the bat book isn't what i'd consider light reading but at least it
exists).
craig
--
craig sanders
networking consultant Available for casual or contract
temporary autonomous zone system administration tasks.
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