Re: MTA

[lee <lee@yun.yagibdah.de>]

On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 10:14:13PM +0200, Pawel Cholewinski wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I want to install MTA in my network. I want to know which mail transfer
> agent is recommended (postfix, exim, sendmail or other else) and why.
> And which is unsafe and why.

You need to give information about what exactly you are trying to
achieve. Exim and postfix are both good choices, but there are setups
that are easier to do with either one or the other. Sendmail can be
difficult to configure --- which is an euphemism.

Exim is my favourite. I found it extremely easy to configure, the
documentation is outstanding, and the support that you can get from
exims mailing list is great. It also has always been working totally
reliable both on my comp at home as well as for the company I've been
working for.

If a mail server is "safe" or "unsafe" depends on what you mean by
"safe"/"unsafe". You can configure exim in such a way that it might
not be considered safe, and the same is probably true for postfix and
sendmail.

If you're worried about security, you can have a setup involving two
MTAs on two different hosts one of which is visible to the outside to
receive and to send mail like a smarthost while the other one is only
visible on the internal network except for the communication with the
smarthost.

Exim gives you control over the resources it uses. This allows you to
set up the MTA in such a way that it remains fully operational even
when having to deal with enourmous amounts of mail. I don't know if
postfix has features like that ...