Re: exim or postfix
On Wed, Nov 10, 2004 at 08:21:14AM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
> also sprach Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> [2004.11.10.0010 +0100]:
> > > There have been some very simple things that I've needed to find
> > > solutions to with postfix in the past which I ended up having to
> > > do with procmail that I can now deal with in ~ 3 lines in the exim
> > > config.
> >
> > my guess is that you just know exim better than postfix, so things
> > that an experienced postfix user would find easy aren't as easy for
> > you as just using exim.
> >
> > all of the things you listed as benefits of exim, my first thought
> > was "but postfix does that (and it does it better :)".
>
> You are not seriously arguing this, right?
yes.
> The exim routers are far beyond what postfix can do.
not in my experience.
> IMHO, they are far beyond the job of an MTA, so it's more a plus for
> exim than a minus for postfix.
show me anything that you think can't be done in postfix and i'll probably tell
you how it can be done.
in my experience, the only people who say "postfix can't do that" are people
who don't actually know postfix, or who are so caught up in the way that you do
it in some other MTA that it never occurs to them to investigate how you might
do it in something else such as postfix.
every MTA has a different conceptual model for how mail is handled. if someone
insists on applying exim models to postfix (or vice-versa) then they're not
going to be very successful.
> Anyway, if you are so confident about postfix, then maybe you can
> teach me how to set up spamassassin to run under the local user's
> identity,
procmail, maildrop or whatever local delivery agent you use can run
spamassassin. that's part of an LDA's job.
even on the simplest level, a .forward file which pipes to SA is
executed under the UID of the user.
before you say "but i want the MTA to do it", that's just you thinking
in terms of a monolithic MTA like exim. anyone who thinks in postfix
terms would be horrified by the idea of having a huge setuid binary try
to do everything. postfix consists of several small, modular parts. each
one does it's job, and each one is replacable. postfix can hand off
local delivery to it's own LDA called "local" or it can hand off local
delivery to procmail or maildrop or cyrus or whatever. you can even have
some local mail delivered by local and some by procmail etc. as far as
postfix is concerned, it doesn't matter - as long as they fulfil the
function of a local delivery agent.
> and how to route messages based on the sending address
> (for SPF reasons).
no idea, never needed to do it. try the postfix-users archives.
if it's not straight-forward, i'll bet you could do it with a policy server.
> > ps: i've used pretty nearly all of the free software MTAs (and
> > some not-so-free, like qmail) over the last 15 years.
>
> So have i, but i miss in your list a mention of exim.
i tried exim sometime after switching to sendmail. it was just smail without
the stupid bugs, so i saw no reason to switch to it. it's progressed a lot
since then, but it is still the same model as exim.
> I have also never used exim because I had settled on postfix through
> much the same path (I also checked out zmailer in between) as you and
> was
me too. it didn't do anything amazingly different and was even clumsier to use
than qmail.
i tried pretty nearly every MTA i ever cam across....and am a firm believer in
the maxim that all mail programs suck, but some suck less. and postfix sucks
least of all.
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> (part time cyborg)
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