Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 1 Feb 2001 21:33:38 -0500 (EST)
From:      David Gilbert <dgilbert@velocet.ca>
To:        "Andre Hall" <ahall@pcgameauthority.com>
Cc:        "Dragos Ruiu" <dr@kyx.net>, "Christopher Farley" <chris@northernbrewer.com>, "Fenix" <fenix@xs4some.net>, <freebsd-security@freebsd.org>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   [security] Re: sendmail vs. postfix question
Message-ID:  <14970.7298.155915.471272@trooper.velocet.net>
In-Reply-To: <001c01c08c60$a49ee640$040aa8c0@pcgameauthority.com>
References:  <01020104192002.01203@xs4some.net> <20010131235613.A7019@northernbrewer.com> <01020103331409.27656@smp.kyx.net> <001c01c08c60$a49ee640$040aa8c0@pcgameauthority.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

[various, deleted]

I must say that I actually understand sendmail at a low level.  Back
in '92 (before many alternatives were viable) I did signifcant raw .cf 
hacking that I am confident modern alternatives would not be able to
grok.  But those problems were extrodinary...

Last year, I installed one of our machines with postfix.  Since then,
I have been happy and when opportunity has presented itself, I have
loaded other machines with postfix in our network.  It performs well,
and I have only had minor issues.

- recently rmail changed the flags it uses.  Caused some coniptions
   before I relized what was causing delivery failure.  Luckily uucp
   saves failed data.

- One machine mysteriously "looses" the postfix master process.  It's
   still running, but not working ... and (annoyingly) at a different
   PID than "postfix reload" expects it to be.  I havn't got a fix for 
   this one yet.

- You can't get "real" status from Postfix.

The latter is apparently a design issue.  With little daemons doing
little jobs, it's difficult to get the type of status info that you
get from ps -axww about sendmail.

That said, only one major machine in our network is left running
sendmail.  It will likely fall.  I could fix what I don't like about
it with .cf hacking, but postfix does it's job better and has more
direct configuration for it's issue.

In short, I like the security of non-root processing (esp. for
smptd).  I like the simple configuration and speed.  I don't like that 
I can't tell that a certain smtp instance is talking to a certain host 
X.

Dave.

-- 
============================================================================
|David Gilbert, Velocet Communications.       | Two things can only be     |
|Mail:       dgilbert@velocet.net             |  equal if and only if they |
|http://www.velocet.net/~dgilbert             |   are precisely opposite.  |
=========================================================GLO================


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?14970.7298.155915.471272>