Interestingly enough, I started using Mercury in 2000, version 1.48.
My search criteria for the MTA included full relay control, support for SMTP AUTH, support for APOP. Mercury was the only product running on Novell that satisfied all of my requirements. It did have a couple of idiosyncrasies, but I did not see a software which does not have some. At least as of yet.
First thing I made sure my installation was not an open relay and that it passed all abuse tests available at that time. I retested it regularly, at least once a year, and it never failed, not a single time.
I did not have a chance to look into the code so I cannot be a judge here. What I can attest to is that the code runs flawlessly for as long as the host server runs. And as Novell runs practically indefinitely so the Mercury does.
I completely understand your concern regarding poor initial defaults in terms of open relaying. Maybe the software should have been rewritten at certain point to make some settings permanent. Unfortunately David stopped Novell development in May of 2000.
Should the quality of the product be questioned based on the fact that it reflected the trends of the time and was consistently backwards compatible? I doubt...
It sounds like you had some really bad luck with your users who were unable to understand and modify a single.ini file.
You are right, up to a certain version Mercury came open by default. Do you remember the Internet terrain in 90s? At that time, especially in the first half of decade, spam was not an issue or a minor issue. Almost all SMTP servers were open at that time for everybody to use.
As far as the queue processing goes I have never ever had any problems with my clients. It may be a matter of volume. My installations do not process more than 10,000 messages a day.
Need help setting it up? It runs flawlessly for multiple customers of mine. Initial setup takes 30 minutes, then it just runs. Maybe it is the "operator" problem you have, not the "software" one.
Well, I think there is one more completely overlooked product in this discussion. It is the original Mercury for NetWare, so called Mercury/NLM.
To say that the product is well written will be a huge understatement. Consider this. The last version 1.48 was released back in 2000. Since then Novell released 3 major versions of NetWare. Mercury runs on the current version 6.5 absolutely flawlessly, the same way it ran on version 4.11.
It is the easiest, lightest MTA on NetWare. And it is FREE.
David Harris is a great programmer, no doubts on my part.
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Interestingly enough, I started using Mercury in 2000, version 1.48.
My search criteria for the MTA included full relay control, support for SMTP AUTH, support for APOP. Mercury was the only product running on Novell that satisfied all of my requirements. It did have a couple of idiosyncrasies, but I did not see a software which does not have some. At least as of yet.
First thing I made sure my installation was not an open relay and that it passed all abuse tests available at that time. I retested it regularly, at least once a year, and it never failed, not a single time.
I did not have a chance to look into the code so I cannot be a judge here. What I can attest to is that the code runs flawlessly for as long as the host server runs. And as Novell runs practically indefinitely so the Mercury does.
I completely understand your concern regarding poor initial defaults in terms of open relaying. Maybe the software should have been rewritten at certain point to make some settings permanent. Unfortunately David stopped Novell development in May of 2000.
Should the quality of the product be questioned based on the fact that it reflected the trends of the time and was consistently backwards compatible? I doubt...
It sounds like you had some really bad luck with your users who were unable to understand and modify a single .ini file.
You are right, up to a certain version Mercury came open by default. Do you remember the Internet terrain in 90s? At that time, especially in the first half of decade, spam was not an issue or a minor issue. Almost all SMTP servers were open at that time for everybody to use.
As far as the queue processing goes I have never ever had any problems with my clients. It may be a matter of volume. My installations do not process more than 10,000 messages a day.
Need help setting it up? It runs flawlessly for multiple customers of mine. Initial setup takes 30 minutes, then it just runs. Maybe it is the "operator" problem you have, not the "software" one.
Well, I think there is one more completely overlooked product in this discussion. It is the original Mercury for NetWare, so called Mercury/NLM. To say that the product is well written will be a huge understatement. Consider this. The last version 1.48 was released back in 2000. Since then Novell released 3 major versions of NetWare. Mercury runs on the current version 6.5 absolutely flawlessly, the same way it ran on version 4.11. It is the easiest, lightest MTA on NetWare. And it is FREE. David Harris is a great programmer, no doubts on my part.