Re: Postfix as default MTA?
"Steve Lamb" <morpheus@rpglink.com> writes:
> On 28 Jun 1999 09:05:21 -0400, Michael Alan Dorman wrote:
> >At the same time, I also think it makes sense for Debian to recommend
> >as its default mailer something that's up to handling our listserver's
> >load---which we can't do with qmail, and none of the other options
> >seem up to the load.
> What, exactly, is wrong with Exim? IIRC the reason the list server
> hasn't been switched over was due to non-technical reasons. IE,
> making sure we lost no mail in the process, not that the current
> default mailer couldn't handle the load.
Perhaps I misremember, then. I thought the issue was one of load.
> Simply put, there are no figures for most alternative mailers under
> heavy loads as most places run sendmail. My largest list, however,
> of ~230 people (yeah, laugh it up) runs quite snappily under Exim
> with a max allowed 25 connections on a 5k/20k cable link. That's 5k
> up. Most of the addresses are delivered to within the first minute.
OK. At the University of Miami School of Law, they have postfix
running a mostly local mailing list with more than 2000 users (the
entire student population). Most deliveries happen in under a minute,
without the load becoming excessive.
I'll tell you what I like about postfix---like qmail, it's got a
segmented architecture, which means that local delivery doesn't
require forking a large process so that it can in turn exec a small
one. Before I was able to move the above mailing lists to something
other than sendmail, sending a single mail would bring the box to its
knees as sendmail spawned a bazillion copies of itself, so it could
exec deliver. I get the impression exim does the same---which worries
me. Is my worry unfounded? Possibly. I tried exim once, and
disliked the configuration---I found sendmail+M4 to be easier.
As for heavy loads, as someone else pointed out, postfix delivers all
the freebsd mailing lists, plus some ietf or internic stuff---I
honestly forget. Weitse can provide other information, I suspect---he
did a survey a month or two ago while lobbying IBM to change the
license.
Mike.
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