Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:11:06 -0400 From: Paul Chvostek <paul+fbsd@it.ca> To: Josh Kidd <jkidd@afflink.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Best SMTP Gateway Program and Reporting Tools Message-ID: <20080814211106.GA13361@it.ca> In-Reply-To: <90B9B014E38B4C48A792EFD25F27624E023E9166@ALAFEXCH.performance.pfgc.com> References: <90B9B014E38B4C48A792EFD25F27624E023E9166@ALAFEXCH.performance.pfgc.com>
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Hi Josh, On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 03:22:55PM -0500, Josh Kidd wrote: > > I just wanted to pose this question to the list on people's opinions as > to what the best SMTP Gateway program (ie. Sendmail, Postfix, etc) is > and what the best log analysis tool for that SMTP program is. All the advice from other messages stands. Each package has its benefits. Everbody knows and supports sendmail, but it's annoying to configure. Postfix is great, easy to configure, and now with "milter" support can do almost anything that Sendmail can. Smail and Exim users swear by their products, and I'm sure they're great (though I've never used either). Zmailer scales beautifully, though if you actually have enough traffic to take advantage of its scaling, you should buy another five mail servers. As for the best log analysis tool ... it's not free, but I absolutely adore Sawmill (http://www.sawmill.net/). It will support any and all log formats -- I currently use it with both Sendmail and Postfix logs. Highly recommended. And not very expensive. > is our main requirement is to have a way to view the logs on a web based > interface that will allow our system administrators when a customer > complains they didn't receive an email to be able to go into the logs > and search by date/time and view the activity for that period to > determine if the mail went through our system or if it was blocked and > if so why. Grep is your friend. Innovative use of grep, even. And if you use sendmail, here's a tool I wrote many many years ago that's had regular use over the years: http://www.it.ca/~paul/mailqgrep I haven't yet adapted it to Postfix logs. Trickier to parse. > I've heard of and read about a few different programs like SMA and > Anteater and pflogstats, but I don't know if these will have the > functionality I need to allow admins to search logs for a specific > date/time and/or specific phrase/address on a web based interface. Yup. The most detailed view of your log data is a direct one that you can get using grep. I don't know those other packages, but I do love Sawmill's web UI. (Hear that, Greg? I'm marketing for ya! ;] ) p -- Paul Chvostek <paul@it.ca>
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