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Postfix
Fortunately, my first needs were simple and I came to realise that Postfix was a much easier system to install and maintain. Now that my needs are more complex, I was glad when this book hit my desk at exactly the same time as I started upgrading the corporate servers from Mac OS 9 to OS X Server.
Postfix: The Definitive Guide seems to fit the bill. It is a well-written and well-constructed guide to mail systems in general and Postfix in particular. (Oh, and speaking of definitive, could someone at O'Reilly provide a definitive answer to both reviewers and their own editors as to that colon? This is the second 'Definitive Guide' I've reviewed in as many months, and they are sprinkled with instances of each book's title, sometimes including that colon, sometimes leaving it out.)
The book starts with a good overview of the underlying technology in Chapters 1 and 2. I can't blame Dent for my slight confusion in the section on addresses and headers - having RFC822 superseded by RFC2822 was just a little too much coincidence for this particular "bear of little brain." He then follows it with a chapter discussing Postfix's architecture, important since Postfix uses a much more modular approach than the sendmail monolith, with each part of the mail handling process a different executable and the single queue turned into five.
Once the background is well covered, Dent then gets onto the nitty-gritty of configuring and administering Postfix. He has certainly covered everything I needed, including spam handling, multiple domains, relaying, SASL authentication and using LDAP. Once I'd finished grokking all that, and getting it integrated into my servers, I had a corporate email system up in three sites that replaced and improved upon a couple of thousand dollars worth of proprietary dreck. Happy is an understatement.
Dent's writing is sometimes a little patchy, though never bad. The technical detail does seem overpowering in places, though, and I occasionally found myself reading a section through more than once with a configuration file open in front of me. There are certainly spots where a little more hand holding and care with the writing would have been appreciated. (If you are a little more cognizant of the interstices of mail systems then you may not have the same problem.)
I did, however, appreciate the appendices enormously. The four appendices cover configuration parameters, Postfix commands, installation, and an FAQ. My system came with Postfix compiled and installed just as I required it so I didn't get a chance to thoroughly test out Dent's installation procedure (though it looks good); the other three continue to be useful.
If you want to have a look for yourself, then the usual O'Reilly page is complete with a table of contents and index, but this time no example chapter is provided (how come, O'Reilly?). You can also get an expanded version of the FAQ in Appendix 4 from Dent's website. A better example of Dent's writing style is an excellent article on troubleshooting with Postfix logs at O'Reilly's Onlamp.com.
This is an excellent book, Dent has explained the underlying methodology and use of Postfix well, taken the reader through all aspects of this MTA system and explained both the why and the how. I would recommend this book (and, as a result Postfix) to anyone looking for an MTA and a guide to configuring and running it.
You can purchase Postfix: The Definitive Guide from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
after admin'ing sendmail for two years, I switched to Postfix a month ago, and wow, what a difference. recommended, and I'd think a book would only be needed for someone that was deploying this in a large organization.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
...but comparing how complex sendmail configuration is, and how simple is it to configure Postfix, does a guy who ate his teeth on Sendmail really need -a book- to learn something SO much easier?
(while Sendmail config file reminds raw binary, Postfix is all easy, understandable and well commented options)
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I have also read this book, reviewed it, and submitted it. Obviously honestpuck is more interesting than me, and I can accept that :-).
Good book, but even with Kyle's help I still can't get procmail working with postfix. Postfix has its own filtering mechanism, including spam filtering. It doesn't seem to allow 3rd party apps like procmail and spamassassin to play with it, though. I can't find info on Gogole either. Is anyone using procmail or spamassassin with postfix?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
> am i the only dork that decided to learn sendmail, > and now have no issue with its configuration??
No, you aren't. sendmail just works. Oh, and I
badly failed trying to configure postfix.
You'd be surprised.. OS 9 is a very secure OS.. there is no root shell to spawn after smashing the stack, for instance.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
There are still quite a few Mac OS 9 servers - running Webstar or AppleShare IP, or maybe even Eudora Internet Mail Server.
It's actually not a bad platform at all and can be quite reliable.
I replaced sendmail wwith postfix on all my non-isiolated machines last year after the sendmail vulnerability-of-the-week treadmill got very old.
it was *really* simple to do.
postfix: the ultimate sendmail patch.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
So the point was that you are the admin for a corporate network that ran on MacOS 9, and now runs on MacOS X.
And therefore, since the administration is so easy, you have plenty of time to read and review books.
See? He made a funny.
(Mind you, this is funny because it's true. If you'd said the same thing except about moving your servers from Windows NT 4 to Windows 2003 Advanced Server, he could have said the same thing, and it would've been funny because it was so outrageously false.)
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
I've long wished that Wietse Venema would turn his attention next to a replacement for BIND. Can you imagine it? I get wistful thinking about it.
In this day and age of DNS and MTAs synergizing to combat spam, it kind of makes some sense, doesn't it?
I use tinydns myself but the DJB way has also irked me. Which is why I turned to postfix after evaluating qmail long ago. sendmail's security problems and horrid config made it out of the question.
Kinda like BIND. Though the config isn't as bad as sendmail.cf (and tinydns's data file is about as bad), I'd like to see what Wietse would come up with...
-h3