Sendmail Enabler for Mac OS X

gulker writes "It's really nice to be able to use sendmail as a SMTP server on a PowerBook if you move around a lot. But enabling sendmail on OS X is non-trivial, and while a good tutorial exists, the stock Mac OS X 10.2 package is missing the m4 macro processor needed to regenerate sendmail.cf. So it was great news to hear about Bernard Teo's Sendmail Enabler, a cool Aqua-GUI-interface sendmail 'configurator' for Mac OS X."

Comments

Why sendmail is good for Apple servers

[Nightlily]

I'm happy to hear some allowed us to enable Sendmail. I know there are other SMTP servers out there (Postfix), but Sendmail is not a horrible mail server. Yes, there are bugs (any product that is used will have bugs reported eventually). Now, Exchange server.... that's a horrible mail server.

The best part about this news is that it gives Mac users more options. Regardless if you like a project or not, the ability to choose between server products helps advance the Apple server platform.

Re:Why sendmail is good for Apple servers

[sid crimson]

Repeat after me: Exchange is not a mail server, it's a Groupware package.

Anyone using it strictly for mail deserves what they get. The rest of us deserve... well... erm. Nevermind. :-)

-sid

Re:Sendmail?!

[Mikey-San]

If anything, Sendmail is less secure than Postfix, bro. And not part of the OS? Well, get ready for Postfix, 'cause it's in Panther in the place of Sendmail. ;-)

Re:Spam Relay Enabler maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

The real advantage is that some Mac users will leave open port 25, allowing script kiddies to send their *Anonymous* emails from someone's Mac, instead of a useful computer such as a linux server.

Re:Sendmail?!

[sporty]

The fact it's not sendmail.

It's the case of software once being buggy now being deemed always buggy.

Remember the various bugs with ext3? Well, let's use the same idea. Ext3 will never be as stable as ext2, especially since it corrupts file systems.

Or apple. Apple never will make a fast system, since they always lag behind intel.

Can't we get past these childish prejiduces? Sendmail is pretty friggin cool. At least in sendmail, i can analyze the headers of a message, and if certain ones are present, do one thing vs another. And I don't need a third party util, like procmail to do it.

Re:Sendmail?!

[sporty]

No, I'm not kidding. If we seperated every single piece, you can suffer what some DB schema's suffer from, over normalization. qmail REALLY suffers from this in its goal of security.

If qmail for instance, since spamassassin doesn't know a thing about the mail system in front of it, it can't tell qmail not to bounce a message from a spammer.. nor can qmail figure this out. So now it bounces mail and then when it can't reach the spamemr, it bounced to postmaster. Joy.

I understand the philosophy of "do one thing and do it well". Do you understand trying to spread yourself too thin? Ever take a look at the redhat configuration scripts? THAT is spreading all of the functionality over too many things, that it is convoluded.

So let sendmail do what it does well.. process mail. Just so long as it doesn't try to do ftp and my other services as well.

is this all i need

[sergeantmudd]

is sendmail all i need to start sending and receiving email on my own? i have a domain-name and website and I would like to run my own email. if i am running apple's mail, what do i need to do to get email from sendmail?

Re:Sendmail?!

[snero3]

I agree with you, Sendmail is extremly powerful if you know how to use it properly IE understand the config file.

That being said, not a lot of people really understand the config file at all (thus leaving open email relays for spammers etc) where as postfix, although not as powerful, is a hell of a lot easier to configure. Most people I know swap out sendmail for postfix becuase they can use all of the features of postfix and none of the features of sendmail(or very few).

What is the point of having really powerful software if you are unable to use it.