On Sun, Jul 21, 2002 at 01:01:22AM +0300, Shaul Karl wrote:
| Assuming that exim is a good choice for a mail server,
That is a good assumption :-).
| would you recommend a newbie on setting mail servers to buy
| O'Reilly's exim book or to solely use what can be found at
| http://www.exim.org? Are there other online resources for exim? How
| good are they?
The resources are very good. The O'Reilly book was written by Philip
himself (as is all the other documentation).
Here are the tradeoffs to note :
1) The online documentation (which is included in
/usr/share/doc/exim) is written in reference format. It
assumes you know how mail works (RFCs 821 and 2821) and you
know the terminology (and you must know the difference between
envelope and headers).
2) The O'Reilly book is written more tutorial style. It will
guide you through and provide example configuration and stuff
like that. While spec.txt is complete and all that is really
needed, you will need to know how to pull the various options
and expansions and whatnot together on your own.
3) The currently available book is for exim 3.x. The current
stable version is 4.05 (soon to be 4.10).
4) The online docs are available for both 3.x and 4.x.
5) Debian (potato, woody, sarge, sid) only has 3.x in official
packages. It is very easy to build 4.x on your own, or to
find unofficial packages, but that's a choice.
6) Philip is presently working hard at rewriting the book to
cover version 4.x.
7) exim 4 is quite a change (improvement!) over exim 3. It is
also less mature and well-tested (however I've been using it
since 4.00 and haven't had any disasters or problems).
What it comes down to is:
1) exim 3 is now obsolete, though it is still "supported" since
not everyone has moved up to exim4 yet.
2) the book covers exim3, unless you want to wait for the new
revision to be completed
3) debian has exim3, so it would take less effort to install it
4) debian has an 'eximconfig' script that can generate a working
basic/template config, for exim3
5) exim4 can do things that exim3 can't
(particularly in the area of the ACLs and local_scan())
So, if you only need a "standard" setup, then I recommend just using
the debian package and the 'eximconfig' script, and ask the list if
you have trouble with some of the terminology (it does ask questions
with more detail than necessary for most people). In this case you
won't need the book.
If you want to do something really outlandish (or just really cool
spam blocking) use exim4. You _may_ still want the book, depending on
your learning style and current level of SMTP knowledge.
Personally I didn't buy the book. I saw it in a bookstore, but
decided I couldn't justify the expense for one more book (at the
time). I read the online docs, joined the exim-users list, and little
by little I became something of an experienced hand with exim. Now I
wouldn't buy the book because a complete reference (spec.txt) is all I
need now. I had also read RFC 821 and 2821 before I started toying
with exim because a (small) class project required it.
If your learning style is similar to mine, then you can probably get
away with just poring over the online docs and things will "click".
If you want a tutorial-style guide through exim and what it can do,
you'll want to buy the book. Then all you need to decide is "when" --
are you going to buy the book now and use exim3, or are you going to
use exim4 and buy the book and internally translate it, or are you
going to use exim4 and just wait for the next revision of the book.
That's something you'll have to decide, but hopefully now you'll be
able to make an informed decision :-).
-D
--
The righteous hate what is false,
but the wicked bring shame and disgrace.
Proverbs 13:5
http://dman.ddts.net/~dman/
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