[TriLUG] Mailserver class options... sendmail vs postfix

Jon Carnes jonc at nc.rr.com
Sun Nov 3 12:28:13 EST 2002


I'm looking for input on which MTA folks want to use in the Mail server
class.  The MTA isn't really important for the concepts of the class but
it makes a big difference in the "push-button" portion of the notes.

The two MTA's to choose from are Sendmail and Postfix.

Sendmail is the default of many distributions and is a true work-horse.
It is one of the best known and widely used MTA's on the Internet. The
main advantage of Sendmail is that it works right "out of the box" so to
speak.  Plus Sendmail is the Defacto Mailserver - everything written for
a mail system is written with Sendmail in mind.  It is the standard
MTA.  
TriLUG used Sendmail for 5 good years, and never dropped an email.

The main disadvantages of Sendmail are that it is harder to tweak and it
does not handle virtual domains as well as Postfix. 


Postfix is rapidly gaining popularity in Linux distributions that are
designed for business use, and deservedly so. Postfix is written to be
secure from the ground-up.  It's also 99.9% Sendmail compliant
(Sendmail's alias and supplemental configuration files will work with
Postfix).  Postfix is "optimized": it's setup to move the maximum amount
of mail in the least amount of time using the least number of
resources.  
TriLUG recently begain running some Virtual domains (as a helping hand
to some of our brother orgs) and at that time dumped Sendmail for
Postfix. The mail you're getting right now is brought to you via
TriLUG's Postfix mail server 

So what's the down side?  Postfix is great on Linux but on other Unixes
it is not as widely supported or as easy to install. Out in the real
world (at least for now) you are much more likely to run into a Sendmail
install than a postfix installation.

====
An alternative to choosing one MTA over another one, is that we could
have two classes: one that uses Sendmail and the other that uses
Postfix.  That would have the advantage of making the class size smaller
and letting some folks attend twice.

Any thoughtful input and opinions will be appreciated.

Jon Carnes 




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