Re: sendmail is slow for mass mail
On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 01:44:27AM +0100, Gavin Hamill wrote:
> > My problem: The emails are being sent out at an UNBELIEVABLY SLOW rate.
> >
> > There must be a better way!
>
> The answer? qmail :)
actually, the answer is postfix - especially since the original message
said:
: Also, I won't use qmail because I have too much invested in sendmail
: at this point, and I dislike the DJB's licensing terms.
postfix addresses both issues.
firstly, unlike qmail, it is a true open source / free software program.
anyone can modify it and redistribute their modified version if they
wish. the license isn't GPL (it's IBM's Public License) but it is
GPL compatible...the main difference is that IBM's license has some
clauses covering patent issues (requiring royalty-free licensing of any
associated patents so that it is impossible to "embrace and extend"
postfix with patented code).
secondly, it is mostly backwards compatible with sendmail. for almost
all sendmail installations, upgrading to postfix is a very simple and
straight-forward operation. you can use your old aliases, virtual user,
transport and other tables with little or no modification - the file
formats are either identical or backwards compatible (e.g. the virtual
table allows multiple addresses on the RHS). the main thing to remember
is that postfix will refuse to run any pipe alias as root so if you have
aliases which depend on being run as root you will have to think of some
other way.
postfix is also faster than qmail. and more flexible. and with much
better anti-spam features.
> It takes a bit of getting used to because it's configuration is like
> nothing else, but give it a go....
this, apart from the licensing issue, is the major problem with qmail.
DJB's attitude is that you have to throw out all your previous work on
your mail system and start from scratch...reimplementing it in his One
True Way. if you don't want to do it exactly as he demands then you're
both wrong and a complete moron because djb is always right. apparently,
bernstein knows your system and your needs better than you do.
the licensing issue causes a second major problem - it forces a
reversion to the bad old days when you had to download a tarball and
then spend ages hunting for numerous patches from various sites all
over the net, download and apply them and hope that none of the patches
conflict with each other. as a result, qmail has basically stagnated for
the last few years...there is very little active development being done
on or for it.
by contrast, postfix has an extremely active development community with
new features and patches being created for it all the time...some of
which even make it into the mainline postfix release if they meet wietse
venema's standards.
for a while, if you wanted a fast secure MTA then qmail was really
the only option available...but that was 3 years ago. now, though,
postfix is a much better option - especially if you have old sendmail
(or sendmail-compatible) systems you want to upgrade.
i can't think of any valid reason to switch to qmail now...and the only
reason for staying with qmail if you already have it installed is that
it's so incompatible with the way other MTAs work that it would be a
PITA to switch.
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
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