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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 I can't blame Dent for my slight confusion in the section on addresses and headers - having RFC822 superseded by RFC2822 was just a little too much coincidence for this particular "bear of little brain."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.
i failed it
I have been running FreeBSD since the 3.x days. Right around this time Linux became popular but I stuck with FreeBSD for several academic reasons. At that point one was as good as the other, but as time went on this changed. Linux started gathering a huge following and it really hit its stride. The developers made leaps in bounds in hardware support. Meanwhile, FreeBSD crawled from 3.x to 4.x, which was a great improvement to be sure, but not as rapid or large as what Linux had been offering.
Being locked into FreeBSD by familiarity and investment at that point I wistfully watched the GNU community race ahead. I wish something would start a similar firestorm of FreeBSD development. I thought nothing of it when Apple bought NeXT in 1996. The Rhapsody project, which was basically just adding some Apple technology to OpenStep, didn't interest me. When Steve Jobs announced Mac OS X in 1999, however, my ears perked up at the mention of my favorite Unix. Apple was going to update the very cores of OpenStep into something new FreeBSD was going to be a huge part of that.
Since Mac OS X v10.0 was released in 2001, Apple has been filtering BSD code in and out of their kernel, userland, and libraries. This code then makes its way back to FreeBSD. Apple's pattern is to sync every major Mac OS X release with the latest major FreeBSD release. For example, Mac OS X v10.1 corresponded to FreeBSD 4.4 and Mac OS X v10.2 matched up with FreeBSD 4.7. By the time Apple released Panther, their contributions back into FreeBSD had amassed into a new FreeBSD milestone, the 5.x branch. Mac OS X v10.3 contained bits of both FreeBSD 4.9 and FreeBSD 5.1.
Look at it this way, only after Apple started modifying FreeBSD 4.x and submitting their modifications did FreeBSD progress to the 5.x branch. The advanced VM and SMP code that allows Mac OS X to run so efficiently is the very same code that finally put FreeBSD on the level with Linux. I run FreeBSD 5.2 on a four-way Xeon box at work and thank Apple every day. If it weren't for the Mach micokernel from Apple we wouldn't be able to do these nice things with FreeBSD now or probably ever.
It's also kind of ironic how such a big deal was made by Wind River Systems buying out both BSDI and Walnut Creek Software. (Does anyone remember this?) The plan was to merge BSD/OS into FreeBSD and sell a special enterprise edition of the operating system while still maintaining the Open Source project. Sadly this fizzled out. No one ever predicted that Apple, of all companies, would ride in with the cavalry and pick up the pieces. Apple has done much more than Wind River ever managed to.
After such a long and precarious history FreeBSD is finally going somewhere and we no longer have to worry about the latest hardware support of when the next release will be. We're firing on all pistons now, and within a couple more years there will be more FreeBSD installs than Linux or Solaris! I'm not so proud that I can't see what is behind this. Apple saved FreeBSD and I have no problem admitting or accepting that. I doubt many others who use FreeBSD do, but I just wanted to point it out.
Thank you, Apple, for saving FreeBSD.
I'm lovin' it!
Come on guys, we haven't slashdotted these webpages yet. Let's make it 3 successful slashdottings in one day! Come on, we've got two under our belts already. I didn't miss one did I?
I walked along the avenue.
I never thought I'd meet a girl like you;
Meet a girl like you.
With auburn hair and tawny eyes;
The kind of eyes that hypnotize me through;
Hypnotize me through.
And I ran, I ran so far away.
I just ran, I ran all night and day.
I couldn't get away.
A cloud appears above your head;
A beam of light comes shining down on you,
Shining down on you.
The cloud is moving nearer still.
Aurora borealis comes in view;
Aurora comes in view.
And I ran, I ran so far away.
I just ran, I ran all night and day.
I couldn't get away.
Reached out a hand to touch your face;
You're slowly disappearing from my view;
Disappearing from my view.
Reached out a hand to try again;
I'm floating in a beam of light with you;
A beam of light with you.
And I ran, I ran so far away.
I just ran, I ran all night and day.
I couldn't get away.
And that's just for starters...
conti.nues in a
Will someone please mod this guy up to +5 funny, then -1 troll?
I don't know what that is supposed to be.
Apparently you posted that article "POST FIX", as in "after your last fix of meth".
you can't say that on slashdot
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_ _ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
g_______________________________________________g
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____o
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____a
t_______/\_|___C_____)/______\_(_____>__|_/_____t
s______/_/\|___C_____)_______|__(___>___/__\____s
e_____|___(____C_____)\______/__//__/_/_____\___e
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*
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...and have yet to get a response from anyone. What the FUCK does Honstepuck mean? It sounds horrible, like some kind of German fetish or something. I mean what kind of a name is that for a self-respecting geek anyway?
HON-STEH-PUK
???WTF???!
Is honstepuck a verb or a noun? Do you actually participate in honstepucking, or do you grab onto someone's honstepuck?
What puzzles me even more is why so many people seem to just ignore my plea for more information. ISN'T ANYONE else curious about this disturbing and mysterious name???!!! Come on people! Wake the fuck up to what is happening here!!
111 posts.