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Simon - that's absolutely fantastic - well beyond the call of duty. The scale of the project is very small - we have several small sites hosted on a dedicated server. Several of the sites have lots of DNS names associated with them across several DNS providers. The site owners want access to their mail in different ways. I want to set up the MX records so they all point at an MTA on this server and provide for * (catchall) forwarding to another email address by smtp * (catchall) storage in a mailbox * POP3 access to the mailbox * WebMail access to the mailbox The alternatives of trying to set up mail forwarding with each of the DNS providers and purchasing POP3 boxes & webmail from them seem pretty unattractive. Although I have a background in C programming, I'm constrained on time, so recompiling with a bunch of incompatible patches doesn't sound like fun. So it looks to me like postfix or exim. On the web mail front, the branding issue will come up, but I don't know PHP so I want one that "just works", or at least comes with some admin tools. Another possibility is a Plone-based webmail plugin as I'm currently trying to learn Plone. Thanks again, Alasdair. -----Original Message----- From: owner-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Simon Waters Sent: 06 August 2004 12:35 To: list@xxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [LUG] Mail server -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Alasdair Cunningham-Smith wrote: | Well - the issue I have is being overwhelmed with advice. My cup runneth | over; I have an embarrassment of riches from which to choose. Can anyone | offer (links to) an objective discussion on the merits of: | * sendmail | * postfix | * qmail | * exim | * (others as yet not mentioned) Objective? Nah not seen any. I don't think there are many objective software tests that are of much use outside code quality assurance and I fear qmail would win that hands down, but that doesn't necessarily make it "better to use". Besides I'm not sure how you objectively measure things like "author attitude", which might affect your decision (let us say the author of one of these doesn't suffer fools gladly, and as a very bright chap the world must seem very full of fools to him). I can link you to some excellent scalability tests, but unless you're handling more than about 1,000,000 email a day, you won't find enlightenment there, and if you know how to configure Qmail, Postfix or Sendmail, they all scale quite well - it is more about ease of configuration for scalability (Exim may scale well but I haven't seen it reviewed in the same tests). sendmail has an appalling security history, it is just about configurable with the new M4 macro scheme, but I'd avoid it like the plague (and I have to use it regularly). qmail is secure, small, and comes with it's own POP3 server. The main problem is the licence and the need to apply most enhancements as patches. Indeed the core source needs patching to even compile on (modern) Redhat's. (I use qmail at work, along with sendmail, in comparison qmail "just works", but it has a zillion (okay maybe 10 - although this includes some fairly sophisticated integration work so that account information is stored in a database (qmail-sql and Postgres) and everything is created dynamically as that database grows) software patches to support what I need, and I even had to manually resolve some of the conflicts when applying them all). Postfix, is "just like sendmail" (it was designed as a drop-in replacement for sendmail), except it has an excellent security record (and architecture), and is easier to configure. It has lots of features you'd have to patch qmail for, and is what I use where I have the final say. Anything sendmail does, Postfix probably does better. It has some cool features like "soft bounce" for mail admins who aren't perfect (like urm me), where after a config change you can run the systems for a ~ short period to see if it is doing what you want without permanently rejecting emails you should have accepted. Exim I haven't used professionally. It is very well featured, and thought of. It has an okay security history despite a slightly suspect security architecture. It is widely used and well integrated into third party tools. I'd say use Postfix or Exim of these four. The choice being down to what other software you are likely to want to integrate. Qmail is okay if you are not afraid of getting your fingers dirty in the C, but unless you are a skilled C programmer you probably should be afraid - you don't want to be responsible for losing email because you got some obscure syntax wrong. As a Debian fan, Postfix and Exim are both bundled and well supported with third party addins and variants in the "free software only" option of Debian. An alternative I'm not that familiar with is Courier. I think Neil here muttered that Courier mail tools provide a good suite of software. It always looked a bit big and daunting to me, as the suite does everything (SMTP MTA, IMAP, etc etc), and whilst you can pick and choose, the main advantage of going this route would be integration of the tools I suspect. Courier IMAP has a very good reputation, but then the main competition for IMAP servers was uwimap (which is adequate but not wonderfully documented and had security problems (and may still do)). So I guess anything but sendmail is my advice ;) But hopefully you can get a bit of direction from the comments. | Also: | * ilohamail | * squirrelmail | * (others as yet not mentioned) Squirrelmail will definitely do everything you want. Ilohamail does the basics of what you want in a form that is a lot easier to install, and hack about. If hacking the PHP about is going to frighten you, use Squirrelmail. If you want to customise a simple product to do what you need, go Ilohamail. Ilohamail was started to provide multilingual support, so if using the interface in other languages is a big issue, especially if you have Japanese users, although I suspect Squirrelmail is okay in this regard now. Am I being contradictory in saying I dislike Qmail because you have to hack it about, and prefering Ilohamail because you can hack it about? I don't think so, web interfaces usually need branding or third party integration, but MTA features are largely determined by well known, and well defined, standards and interfaces. In all cases you'll find people on the list who use any or all of these products professionally, so don't sweat the small stuff. Probably best to describe your project in more detail, as there are some interesting prepackaged bundled with different tools already integrated. Things like qmail-sql. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Comment: Using GnuPG with Debian - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFBE2zCGFXfHI9FVgYRAqPDAJ9RduG8sy/RRbUNQXvTHoIntIo72wCggysw zYXumZtpV48xbssJo+ThQRc= =4IYw -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.