Re: (OT) Prejudice against sendmail?
On Thu, Sep 07, 2006 at 11:04:36PM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> On Thursday 07 September 2006 18:51, Cameron L. Spitzer wrote:
> > [This message has also been posted to linux.debian.user.]
> >
> > In article <6QhSL-64o-49@gated-at.bofh.it>, dsr@tao.merseine.nu wrote:
> > > qmail has the least Debian support, due to uninteresting
> > > licensing issues, but has a large user community and excellent
> > > documentation (www.lifewithqmail.org, qmail.org). It runs nicely
> > > on Debian systems, and is unlikely to require upgrading.
> >
> > Sorry, no. On anything bigger than your personal mail
> > server, Qmail is going to require replacing with a modern MTA.
>
> There's a reason to not like it other than just djb-damage?
Yeah.
Qmails logging is horrendous. There is no link between logs of
connections and the source and destination of an email. This makes
tracking an IP of a single hit to many destinations a right rotten pain
in the arse if not impossible. Its internal message ids are recycled so
if you have one and wish to see the log entries for it you're mostlikely
going to be SOL. TAI - because we all need more impediments to quickly
dealing with logs.
Its queue management sucks bottom. If I want to clear out a queue of
spam I effectively have to shut the service down, keep it down whilst
deleting and bring it back up. Expiring message is a possibility but
that just generates bounces and so you have to fsck around again to deal
with those. Then there's the fun that happens when qmail-smtp accepts
the message but qmail-send is not able to deal with it. A nice one for
the unsuspecting sucker that is left to wonder why their messages are
being accepted but not delivered whilst nothing but connections to qmail
are being logged.
Qmail is a dirty, rotten little whore. It was designed to accept
everything because some poor unsuspecting sucker really needs to know
that a message they never sent did not make it to the mailbox of someone
they never heard of because it is full (or just not there).
There's more. I know there's more but I think my mind is blanking it out
and protecting me from it incase I pick up something sharp and pointy.
It's the weekend. I've got other days of the week for pain.
On a quiet system most of this you can get around or it wont affect you
THAT badly. On a busy system you get the joy of pain, or changing so
much of qmail into something else that you wind up with something that
looks like qmail but no longer is.
All in all though, just say no. Save yourself pain and choose Exim,
Sendmail or Postfix.
Oh and I love how the qmail-pop3 client logs where a connection came
from but not what account it attempted to access or any other useful
info. Wooo! Go BAYBE. Ye HAW!
Ahm.
--
"To the extent that we overreact, we proffer the terrorists the
greatest tribute."
- High Court Judge Michael Kirby
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