[Techtalk] Mailserver against Yahoo

[Raven, corporate courtesan]

Heya --

Quoth Carla Schroder (Mon, Feb 18, 2002 at 09:09:19PM -0800):
> Do Postfix. It is secure, stable, and easy to configure. The Postfix 
> discussion list is populated by helpful humans. qmail, which is a very nice 
> program, is less user-friendly, and the mail list is dominated by freaks, 
> flamers, and psychotics. Requests for help are flamed and reamed. The qmail 
> list is so notorious there's even a Yahoo group devoted to the Worst of 
> qmail: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/worst_of_qmail/

	I've used both qmail and Postfix, and liked them both far, far
better than sendmail.  [shudders at the memory of sendmail.cf]  Qmail is
relatively poorly documented (IMO), but I had the benefit of having a
qmail expert on-call the first few times I installed it, so I was
okay.  (Said expert is on this list, too, so if you have qmail problems
I would suggest posting them here.)  The docs don't actually explain how
mail servers work or anything like that, just 'if you want this
behaviour type this' sorts of configuration, and not much of that.  If
you decide to go with qmail, you may want to consider getting the
"Running qmail" book if you are interested in the theory behind a mail
server, and what all the parts do.  On the other hand, once I got qmail
up and running, I've almost never had a problem with it.  It seems very
reliable even under heavy load.

	If you're planning to integrate any other applications with your
mail server (mailing list managers, procmail, fetchmail, things like
that), I'd google-search your particular program to make sure it's easy
to set up.  I had a tough time with procmail and qmail.  (Yah, I know
you can use the .qmail files for filtering, but I wanted to use my
existing procmail recipies.)

	Postfix was a lot easier for me to set up -- reading all the
docs, and beginning to end setup took me half an hour.  (This may be
because I understood mail servers better when I first tried it, or it
may be the superior documentation.)  I've had no problems with it
either, but it hasn't been exposed to anywhere near the volume of mail
that my qmail servers handle yet.  So there's been no trial by fire.

	Just my two cents.  Hope it helps.

Cheers,
Raven 
 
"Just think of me as a very scary cricket."
  -- Louis, after the fearsome chirping noise my car was making turned
     out to be the metal plates on his jacket