Posted by
Cliff
on from the in-rain-sleet-snow-or-shine dept.
gempabumi asks: "I'm in the process of setting up a production server and I need to decide on an MTA. The main function of the MTA will be to run Mailman mailing lists. Of sendmail, Postfix, exim, and qmail, which MTA do you recommend? What are the strengths/weaknesses of each?"
qmail is fast on mailing lists
by
Bruce+Guenter
·
· Score: 3
qmail one of the fastest MTAs around for outgoing email, especially mailing lists. If you really want to blast out copies, check out the big-concurrency patch, which allow you to send to more than 250 recipients simultaneously. It is also generally considered to be one of if not the most secure MTA.
Qmail is a very good piece of software, secure, efficient, fast and with many add-ons available. The main problem I've had with it is the documentation, which is somewhat missing.
The software is really modular, with a daemon to handle every task, you can really tailor it to your needs. Spam blocking, virtual hosting and more are done with modules. One of the results of this is that you have to look at many places for documentation and these many docs often contradict themselves.
There's a howto of correct quality, but if you go a bit further than standard setup (I tried to setup vmailmgr for virtualhosting) you're bust!
I also urge you to set it up on a debian distro, because some stuff like user accounts is already configured.
Quentin
I use Debian on my machine and have exim as my MTA. It configures in about 15 seconds from the.deb, complete with MAPS RBL support. Its extremely fast and reliable.
First off, *do not use mailman*. This is easily the worst mailing list software you can find. It mails passwords, clear text, monthly. I think gnu mailmain is even two steps worse than majordomo, which is hard to complish.
Qmail is fast, efficient, easy to configure (the config files make sense) and there is a huge amount of support.
Qmail has been tight for years; the code hasn't changed in a long time. The only problem with that is the documentation is out of date. I heard rumours of a qmail 1.04 to fix the documentation.
After you choose qmail, I recommend ezmlm for mailing lists.
The configuration that always comes through for me is:
qmail+vpopmail+ezmlm
Make sure all of your domains are vpopmail virtuals.
Also, if you are affraid to get into the hardcore configuration right away, start with qmailadmin. It supports all the ezmlm stuff, so you can use the gui right away. You'll start running into limitations, but you will have lots of examples to use from that point.
btw, I have unsubscrbed from mailing lists because they use mailman.
-- --
DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
> First off, *do not use mailman*. This is easily the worst mailing list software you can find. It mails passwords, clear text, monthly. I think gnu mailmain is even two steps
worse than majordomo, which is hard to complish.
Hardly. Mailman is lightyears ahead of majordomo. If you don't want the passwords mailed every month simply disable it with mailman's very easy to use admin tools.
I'm very satisfied with Postfix as MTA. Used Postfix at my former employee. On a lowly pentium 133 and 48 MB RAM and RedHat 6.1 it relayed approx. 1 GB data each working day which was about 25.000-30.000 messages a day. This without any downtime. The utilization hardly topped 0.1. Very secure and very easy to configure. The mailing-list is also very responsive. Qmail (no experience) also sounds like a good alternative.
D'oh! Gotta love Slashdot messing up my links... Anyway here's the correct version of my post:
Even though I personally haven't really compared any MTAs, you might want to check out this comparison table which has users' ratings and comments for exim, postfix, qmail, sendmail, etc
I've tried exim, sendmail, qmail and postfix...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
First, I would avoid sendmail just because it can
be a pain to configure and it has a rep for being
a big ass security hole(TM). Debian comes with
exim so I sometime use it when I don't have time
for either qmail or postfix. If I am setting up
a stand-alone system that isn't gonna be watched
over very closely I usually install qmail because
I have no doubt that it is the most secure out
of the box. Problem is that the author has this
stupid license that pretty much requires that you
compile/configure by hand. I'm spoiled from apt
and hate to do that anymore. On most machines I
choose postfix because it is very modular and
secure, seems to perform well, and it easy as heck
to chroot(). On Debian you just apt-get install
postfix and then edit master.cf and main.cf.
Re:I've tried exim, sendmail, qmail and postfix...
by
AlexA
·
· Score: 3
Actually, you can have apt or whatever do the compiling do for you automatically. It's really simple. Just do the following:
apt-get install qmail-src
cd/usr/src/qmail-src
build-qmail
The rest is self-explanatory (it'll create a deb package and optionally install it).
I've set up at least a dozen qmail servers: small ones, big ones, red ones, blue ones...
Sendmail's a whore, and that's really the only other Linux MTA I've used. I've heard good things about Postfix but seriously I haven't found a single thing wrong with qmail:
Jesus I have a lot more respect to the link crazy posts out there.:-)
At any rate -- I've run it for years now and never had a problem. The servers just work. We've used an alias system and serialmail to allow branch offices to pick up mail for their local users without requiring a permanent net connection. The ability to run any program on receipt of a message or delivery to a specific address is very handy, as is the ability for individual users to tailor their own mail deliveries and create their own mailing lists and aliases. Very powerful and very cool.
And, despite what some others have said about the brain damage involved in adding features to the source code: it's not that bad. I do wish, however, that there were at least some comments... The total lack of comments and useful variable names are a hindrance.
sendmail 4.x - it still works.
by
bluGill
·
· Score: 2
My main MTA is still sendmail 4.something with all the security holes. It runs just fine on my 386 and some old version of slackware from when slackware was king and redhat didn't exist. If it works don't break it is a good motto, and I proved that a year ago when I failed to get postfix working and it took me a couple day to get the old sendmail back. Since then I've been afraid to mess with that machine.
It occurs to me that you might consider switching to sendmail based on my comments of it working. while It is true that it works just fine even in these bad days, I don't recomend it. There are potential problems. However it still works for me, which is what counts: what works for you. If it ain't broke don't break it, but if it is broke fix it good, which is why I wanted to use postfix. (Now I'm just behind a firewall, which is second best.
I can't find anything in the sparse qmail documentation regarding anti-spam filtering. I'd love to start using qmail, but I won't do it if I can't use the RBL. Anybody know if qmail supports this?
Slashdot Mirror
qmail one of the fastest MTAs around for outgoing email, especially mailing lists. If you really want to blast out copies, check out the big-concurrency patch, which allow you to send to more than 250 recipients simultaneously. It is also generally considered to be one of if not the most secure MTA.
It's apparently more secure, due to security audits. Just hearsay, though...
Qmail is a very good piece of software, secure, efficient, fast and with many add-ons available.
The main problem I've had with it is the documentation, which is somewhat missing. The software is really modular, with a daemon to handle every task, you can really tailor it to your needs. Spam blocking, virtual hosting and more are done with modules. One of the results of this is that you have to look at many places for documentation and these many docs often contradict themselves.
There's a howto of correct quality, but if you go a bit further than standard setup (I tried to setup vmailmgr for virtualhosting) you're bust!
I also urge you to set it up on a debian distro, because some stuff like user accounts is already configured. Quentin
We all love Debian here.
Help us build a better map!
First off, *do not use mailman*. This is easily the worst mailing list software you can find. It mails passwords, clear text, monthly. I think gnu mailmain is even two steps worse than majordomo, which is hard to complish.
Qmail is fast, efficient, easy to configure (the config files make sense) and there is a huge amount of support.
Qmail has been tight for years; the code hasn't changed in a long time. The only problem with that is the documentation is out of date. I heard rumours of a qmail 1.04 to fix the documentation.
After you choose qmail, I recommend ezmlm for mailing lists.
The configuration that always comes through for me is:
qmail+vpopmail+ezmlm
Make sure all of your domains are vpopmail virtuals.
Also, if you are affraid to get into the hardcore configuration right away, start with qmailadmin. It supports all the ezmlm stuff, so you can use the gui right away. You'll start running into limitations, but you will have lots of examples to use from that point.
btw, I have unsubscrbed from mailing lists because they use mailman.
-- DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
I'm very satisfied with Postfix as MTA. Used Postfix at my former employee. On a lowly pentium 133 and 48 MB RAM and RedHat 6.1 it relayed approx. 1 GB data each working day which was about 25.000-30.000 messages a day. This without any downtime. The utilization hardly topped 0.1. Very secure and very easy to configure. The mailing-list is also very responsive. Qmail (no experience) also sounds like a good alternative.
exim (www.exim.org) - if 3 million dial-up Freeserve users (aka: Planet Online) can't manage to break it, maybe it'll be good enough!?! ;-)
...
More seriously, exim is a breeze to set up and has coped with anything I've thrown at it / seen thrown at it
the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority. They were on strike for over a month!
sulli
RTFJ.
Even though I personally haven't really compared any MTAs, you might want to check out this comparison table which has users' ratings and comments for exim, postfix, qmail, sendmail, etc
First, I would avoid sendmail just because it can
be a pain to configure and it has a rep for being
a big ass security hole(TM). Debian comes with
exim so I sometime use it when I don't have time
for either qmail or postfix. If I am setting up
a stand-alone system that isn't gonna be watched
over very closely I usually install qmail because
I have no doubt that it is the most secure out
of the box. Problem is that the author has this
stupid license that pretty much requires that you
compile/configure by hand. I'm spoiled from apt
and hate to do that anymore. On most machines I
choose postfix because it is very modular and
secure, seems to perform well, and it easy as heck
to chroot(). On Debian you just apt-get install
postfix and then edit master.cf and main.cf.
I've set up at least a dozen qmail servers: small ones, big ones, red ones, blue ones...
Sendmail's a whore, and that's really the only other Linux MTA I've used. I've heard good things about Postfix but seriously I haven't found a single thing wrong with qmail:
Jesus I have a lot more respect to the link crazy posts out there. :-)
At any rate -- I've run it for years now and never had a problem. The servers just work. We've used an alias system and serialmail to allow branch offices to pick up mail for their local users without requiring a permanent net connection. The ability to run any program on receipt of a message or delivery to a specific address is very handy, as is the ability for individual users to tailor their own mail deliveries and create their own mailing lists and aliases. Very powerful and very cool.
And, despite what some others have said about the brain damage involved in adding features to the source code: it's not that bad. I do wish, however, that there were at least some comments... The total lack of comments and useful variable names are a hindrance.
Go get it. Install it. Love it.
Third-party qmail support is available from many vendors, not just inter7.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
My main MTA is still sendmail 4.something with all the security holes. It runs just fine on my 386 and some old version of slackware from when slackware was king and redhat didn't exist. If it works don't break it is a good motto, and I proved that a year ago when I failed to get postfix working and it took me a couple day to get the old sendmail back. Since then I've been afraid to mess with that machine.
It occurs to me that you might consider switching to sendmail based on my comments of it working. while It is true that it works just fine even in these bad days, I don't recomend it. There are potential problems. However it still works for me, which is what counts: what works for you. If it ain't broke don't break it, but if it is broke fix it good, which is why I wanted to use postfix. (Now I'm just behind a firewall, which is second best.
I can't find anything in the sparse qmail documentation regarding anti-spam filtering. I'd love to start using qmail, but I won't do it if I can't use the RBL. Anybody know if qmail supports this?
-Waldo