[TriLUG] Mailserver class options... sendmail vs postfix

[Chris Hedemark]

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On Sunday, November 3, 2002, at 12:28 PM, Jon Carnes wrote:

> The two MTA's to choose from are Sendmail and Postfix.

I already know Postfix pretty well (it's too easy to learn, once you 
know how SMTP works).  Sendmail would be good to learn since it is so 
pervasive.  Then again, so is kudzu.  Pervasiveness doesn't imply that 
either one is a good thing to have, though.

> Sendmail is the default of many distributions and is a true work-horse.
> It is one of the best known and widely used MTA's on the Internet. The
> main advantage of Sendmail is that it works right "out of the box" so 
> to
> speak.  Plus Sendmail is the Defacto Mailserver - everything written 
> for
> a mail system is written with Sendmail in mind.  It is the standard
> MTA.

And to borrow from a thread on bsd at trilug.org, Sendmail has a 
friendlier license than Postfix.  Postfix is encumbered with patent & 
termination related stuff that isn't liked by GNU *or* BSD folks.

> TriLUG used Sendmail for 5 good years, and never dropped an email.

But nobody was too fired up about customizing it.  :-)   Note that 
today TriLUG is running on Postfix.

> The main disadvantages of Sendmail are that it is harder to tweak and 
> it
> does not handle virtual domains as well as Postfix.

This is an understatement.

> Postfix is rapidly gaining popularity in Linux distributions that are
> designed for business use, and deservedly so. Postfix is written to be
> secure from the ground-up.  It's also 99.9% Sendmail compliant
> (Sendmail's alias and supplemental configuration files will work with
> Postfix).  Postfix is "optimized": it's setup to move the maximum 
> amount
> of mail in the least amount of time using the least number of
> resources.

It's also a very popular drop-in for other flavors of UNIX.

> So what's the down side?  Postfix is great on Linux but on other Unixes
> it is not as widely supported or as easy to install.

I would have to respectfully disagree with this.  I've gotten it 
running on several versions of Solaris and OpenBSD.  A few years ago I 
had it running on AIX.  Haven't tried it on my OS X box yet.  Whenever 
I get my OpenVMS install media (anybody have some they don't want 
anymore?) I'll try it on my VAX or my Alphas.  I think I've installed 
it on HP-UX but I forget.  In any case, I've not experienced any more 
difficulty on other platforms than I would have installing other 
packages on those platforms (usually due to lack of development tools 
shipping with the base OS).

> Out in the real
> world (at least for now) you are much more likely to run into a 
> Sendmail
> install than a postfix installation.

Agreed.

> An alternative to choosing one MTA over another one, is that we could
> have two classes: one that uses Sendmail and the other that uses
> Postfix.  That would have the advantage of making the class size 
> smaller
> and letting some folks attend twice.

I think a Postfix class would be a good "intro to SMTP" class, because 
then you could focus more on the protocol since the MTA just makes 
sense.  I can see Sendmail as being a more advanced class for people 
who already have a good grasp of SMTP and what an MTA is supposed to do.

If you focus on Sendmail, I'm interested in coming simply because I've 
not taken much time to learn Sendmail (no more than it takes to replace 
it).

Chris Hedemark
Hillsborough, NC
http://yonderway.com


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