Re: MTA Suggestion
On 10 Nov, Craig Sanders let loose with:
> 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.
>
For the record, xfmail uses maildir format which I found terribly
kludgy... it too could import and export, but I found having a file per
message overkill. I have mail set up on this system to be forwarded to
procmail which sorts and delivers to several mbox files in ~/mail. I
sort my mail into logically-named files by content and use tkrat as my
MUA. I keep all my mail (except the real junk) so a simple script can
save current mail to my archive. I have been *very* pleased with this
arrangement...
> I prefer to use software written by authors who are responsive to user's
> needs.
I am a consultant so I know the necessity of this... I am developing
an app for a company currently that is to integrate several steps in
their design process and have the difficulty of trying to integrate an
app by a company whose support is pitiful... and , of course, they are
less than helpful when they do respond. <sigh>
>> > 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.
yeah, this is true... when I switched from Red Hat to Debian not to
long ago I was quite pleased with this script. In RH you are faced with
the task of setting sendmail up yourself if your needs vary from the
default install (and whose don't!) but I was able to get most of the
way there with that script. Very nice...
> 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).
Documentation, especially *printed* documentation is a critical issue
as well. Sendmail documentation, though vast, seems clearer to me than
others. I spent a good week or so pouring over qmail's documentation
with very little success...
>
> --
> craig sanders
> networking consultant Available for casual or contract
> temporary autonomous zone system administration tasks.
--
Debian GNU Linux
Power to the people...
--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: Tim Ferrell <tjferrell@infoave.net
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-user-request@lists.debian.org .
Trouble? e-mail to templin@bucknell.edu .
Reply to: