Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 18:07:04 -0800 From: "Edward W. M." <edward_wm@hotmail.com> To: des@ofug.org Cc: nbm@mithrandr.moria.org, dominic_marks@hotmail.com, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Secure Servers (SMTP, POP3, FTP) Message-ID: <LC4-LFD32c4UEdFa8Lz000000f5@hotmail.com>
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Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org> writes: >Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> writes: > > On Mon 2001-02-12 (15:51), Edward W. M. wrote: > > > > Mail Options: > > > > 1. Qmail - Secure, written for FreeBSD (Qwest?), Fast, > > > > Configurable > > > I would advise against qmail, as I've had reliability issues > > > with > > > it. > > Like? >I can't speak for Edward, but here are some of the reliability >problems I've run into with QMail: > >Stock QMail (without the large-queue patches) will not handle even >moderate loads gracefully. For some inexplicable reason (read: >gratuitious design flaw), directories which ought to be split into >buckets aren't, so you end up with flat directories holding one file >per queue entry. Also, the default number of buckets (23) is >ridiculously small, unless you're just setting up qmail on your DSL >box to handle mail for yourself, your four months old kitten, and >her pet rock. Right after installing the out-of-the-box stock version of qmail, I ran a stress test and let me just say that you are exaggerating. There is no way it could handle so much mail, four month old kittens are much more advanced nowadays and I hear that pet rocks are quite avid mailing list readers as well. :-)) >Once hell has broken loose, repairing broken QMail queues is fairly >non-trivial. Even moving a broken queue aside and later merging it >into the running queue is nearly impossible without some heavy >scripting; the documented way of doing this is to compile and >install a separate QMail installation configured to run from a >separate directory and process the secondary queue. I gave up on qmail during the testing stage when I was faced with repairing broken queues. IMHO, many people are very happy with their patched versions of qmail because they never ran into serious problems like that in a production environment. Those who continue to run qmail after experiencing such problems either become developers (err, patch contributors) or have no other choice because somebody else has the say over which MTA is to be used (I feel your pain people). The license also makes qmail a far worse piece of software than it could be. Before you can get the desired functionality, you have to apply half a dozen patches and hope that they apply cleanly. Often they do not and you have to dig into the source code to fix things manually, if you can stomach the poor coding style, that is. So what's wrong with that, you may ask, if you want a race car, you have to spend some time tuning it and it is not what the engine looks like on the inside, but how well it performs that counts. I agree, but there is a difference between tuning a car and assembling it from scratch using a builders kit and parts that look odd. Not to mention that I am a bit dismayed when the brakes on such a car give out. This is just my opinion based on personal experience, YMMV. Edward W. M. P.S.: Eventhough it seems that way, I am not a car mechanic. :-) _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message
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