MTA

[pch-2]

Hi

I want to install MTA in my network. I want to know which mail transfer
agent is recommended (postfix, exim, sendmail or other else) and why.
And which is unsafe and why.

Thanks


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[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.-3]

In <4A525B15.7050802@...>, Pawel Cholewinski wrote:
>I want to install MTA in my network. I want to know which mail transfer
>agent is recommended (postfix, exim, sendmail or other else) and why.
>And which is unsafe and why.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=mta+comparison&l=1
(which leads to:)
http://shearer.org/MTA_Comparison

I use exim4.  My roommate swears by postfix.  Either is probably a good
choice.
--
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.           ,= ,-_-. =.
bss@...             ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-'
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[Jochen Schulz-2]

Pawel Cholewinski:
>
> I want to install MTA in my network. I want to know which mail transfer
> agent is recommended (postfix, exim, sendmail or other else) and why.
> And which is unsafe and why.

I would avoid Sendmail since it is *really* old and hard to configure.

Exim is Debian's default MTA so one should think it is a good choice. I
found it too hard to understand when I configured my first MTA a few
years ago and have used Postfix since then. I think most other people
who consciously pick an alternative to Exim do so as well.  Popcon data
shows 19% usage of Postfix and 69% of Exim which appears to support this
theory.

J.
--
When I am at nightclubs I enjoy looking at other people and assessing
their imagined problems.
[Agree]   [Disagree]
                 <http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html>

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.-3]

In <20090706212028.GD31728@...>, Jochen Schulz wrote:
>Pawel Cholewinski:
>> I want to install MTA in my network. I want to know which mail transfer
>> agent is recommended (postfix, exim, sendmail or other else) and why.
>> And which is unsafe and why.
>
>I would avoid Sendmail since it is *really* old and hard to configure.

Sendmail gets more modern all the time, but m4 is quite the beast for
configuration files.  Still, if you learn it you'll be an aid to any project
still using autoconf.

>Popcon data
>shows 19% usage of Postfix and 69% of Exim which appears to support this
>theory.

Popcon data is going to biased in favor of Exim as many users will get it by
default when cron or anacron is installed.

I've found exim4 to be quite easy to configure, but not entirely intuitive.  
The documentation is a required read if you need to do anything not handled
by the debconf setup.  (e.g. tying into a IMAPd or SPAM/malware scans at
delivery or SMTP time)
--
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.           ,= ,-_-. =.
bss@...             ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-'
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[Pete Boyd]

I recommend following this tutorial by Christoph Haas:
http://workaround.org/articles/ispmail-etch/ which will soon be updated
for Debian 5.0 Lenny. There's a community around it, reached through a
mailing list, which gives you a fairly good backing when you need help.
The tutorial is used by a lot of people so it's well proven and in my
experience can be relied upon to just work. The author is a Debian
developer. This was first recommended to me on a Debian IRC channel when I
was trying to piece all the mail server packages together by myself,
probably by Cafuego I think, for which I'm continually grateful. There are
other such tutorials too though I've not tried them.

My own aid to this tutorial is here:
http://thegoldenear.org/toolbox/unices/server-setup-debian-etch.html#mail


--
Pete Boyd

Open Plan IT - http://openplanit.co.uk
The Golden Ear - http://thegoldenear.org



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[Jochen Schulz-2]

Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.:
> In <20090706212028.GD31728@...>, Jochen Schulz wrote:
>>
>> I would avoid Sendmail since it is *really* old and hard to configure.
>
> Sendmail gets more modern all the time, but m4 is quite the beast for
> configuration files.  Still, if you learn it you'll be an aid to any project
> still using autoconf.

I have no trouble believing that. :)

>> Popcon data
>> shows 19% usage of Postfix and 69% of Exim which appears to support this
>> theory.
>
> Popcon data is going to biased in favor of Exim as many users will get it by
> default when cron or anacron is installed.

ACK, that's why I said Postfix is picked by the majority of users
consciously picking an alternative. Of course, we don't know how many
people consciously stay with Exim.

> I've found exim4 to be quite easy to configure, but not entirely intuitive.  
> The documentation is a required read if you need to do anything not handled
> by the debconf setup.  (e.g. tying into a IMAPd or SPAM/malware scans at
> delivery or SMTP time)

ACK again. It's been a while since I last looked into it, but my
impression was that you have to read and understand the whole spec.txt
(which introduces quite a bit of Exim-specific terminology) to be able
to do anything. That's not necessarily a bad thing and I am sure Exim is
a good choice in many setups. I just found that Postfix makes it easier
to configure only the aspects you are interested in.

To the OP: perhaps it would be better if you could say what exactly you
are trying to do. Then people could comment on their experience with
similar setups.

My experience with Postfix:

- "satellite system" as configured by debconf: a no-brainer with either
  Postfix or Exim.

- mail relay for home network. Not that easy if you want sender
  dependent relay hosts and SMTP authentication, but there are good
  howtos out there.

- MX for a small domain with only a few users, but including virtual
  domain hosting, spam filtering, database backend and IMAP (dovecot)
  integration. You have to know what you are doing but then it is
  surprisingly easy.

I think once you grok the whole lookup table concept and Postfix' main
confiuration variables (relay_domains, mydestination, *_restrictions
etc.) you can easily do anything you can expect of an MTA.

J.
--
Every day in every way I am getting better and better.
[Agree]   [Disagree]
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[Osamu Aoki]

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 10:14:13PM +0200, Pawel Cholewinski wrote:
> Hi
>
> I want to install MTA in my network. I want to know which mail transfer
> agent is recommended (postfix, exim, sendmail or other else) and why.
> And which is unsafe and why.

Debian installer chooses exim4 but no program is recommened by Debian.

You can read some background:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch06.en.html#_mail_transport_agent_mta
http://wiki.debian.org/DefaultMTA


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[kj-12]

Does anyone know of a up-to-date report of MTA market share?  I'm only
finding fairly old ones.

thanks
--kj


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[Steve Kemp]

On Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 18:16:33 +0100, kj wrote:

> Does anyone know of a up-to-date report of MTA market share?  I'm only
> finding fairly old ones.

  Most people don't care - they pick one and stick with it.

  Its a religious argument and one that gets repeated every
 six months or so.  Pick one, either the default or the one
 that your most knowledgeable local person prefers.

  At the end of the day all are capable of doing the same
 thing.  Its like asking which is the best fruit: apple or
 orange?

Steve
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[ein gedanke]

Obviously it's the apple:

- the juice doesn't stick to your hands
- you can choose to peel it or not
- it comes in different colors
- it hasn't so much chemicals on it's skin
- it's the fruit of seduction in opposite to a plain meaningless orange
- it cleans your teeth
- it's very easy to cut


so, take postfix! ;)

:D

greetings
vitaminx

2009/7/7 Steve Kemp <skx@...>

On Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 18:16:33 +0100, kj wrote:

> Does anyone know of a up-to-date report of MTA market share?  I'm only
> finding fairly old ones.

 Most people don't care - they pick one and stick with it.

 Its a religious argument and one that gets repeated every
 six months or so.  Pick one, either the default or the one
 that your most knowledgeable local person prefers.

 At the end of the day all are capable of doing the same
 thing.  Its like asking which is the best fruit: apple or
 orange?

Steve
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mud ... vitaminx @ aardmud

[lee-25]

On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 10:14:13PM +0200, Pawel Cholewinski wrote:
> Hi
>
> I want to install MTA in my network. I want to know which mail transfer
> agent is recommended (postfix, exim, sendmail or other else) and why.
> And which is unsafe and why.

You need to give information about what exactly you are trying to
achieve. Exim and postfix are both good choices, but there are setups
that are easier to do with either one or the other. Sendmail can be
difficult to configure --- which is an euphemism.

Exim is my favourite. I found it extremely easy to configure, the
documentation is outstanding, and the support that you can get from
exims mailing list is great. It also has always been working totally
reliable both on my comp at home as well as for the company I've been
working for.

If a mail server is "safe" or "unsafe" depends on what you mean by
"safe"/"unsafe". You can configure exim in such a way that it might
not be considered safe, and the same is probably true for postfix and
sendmail.

If you're worried about security, you can have a setup involving two
MTAs on two different hosts one of which is visible to the outside to
receive and to send mail like a smarthost while the other one is only
visible on the internal network except for the communication with the
smarthost.

Exim gives you control over the resources it uses. This allows you to
set up the MTA in such a way that it remains fully operational even
when having to deal with enourmous amounts of mail. I don't know if
postfix has features like that ...


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[Andrei Popescu-3]

On Wed,08.Jul.09, 01:43:02, lee wrote:
>
> Exim gives you control over the resources it uses. This allows you to
> set up the MTA in such a way that it remains fully operational even
> when having to deal with enourmous amounts of mail. I don't know if
> postfix has features like that ...

<flame on>
Postfix doesn't need such options because it can always deal with
enormous amounts of mail ;)
</flame on>

Actually I have no ideea, but it doesn't really matter. The OP should
investigate both and choose the one *he* likes better.

Regards,
Andrei
--
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)

[kj-12]

Steve Kemp wrote:
>   Its a religious argument and one that gets repeated every
>  six months or so.  Pick one, either the default or the one
>  that your most knowledgeable local person prefers.

I'm comfortable with sendmail, qmail and postfix, work for a company
with a couple of thousand installs of each.

>   At the end of the day all are capable of doing the same
>  thing.  Its like asking which is the best fruit: apple or
>  orange?

I know which one I consider the best.  That wasn't my question.  I'm
curious about server market share.


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[Osamu Aoki]

Hi,

This is getting OT....

On Wed, Jul 08, 2009 at 11:05:38AM +0100, kj wrote:

> Steve Kemp wrote:
>>   Its a religious argument and one that gets repeated every
>>  six months or so.  Pick one, either the default or the one
>>  that your most knowledgeable local person prefers.
>
> I'm comfortable with sendmail, qmail and postfix, work for a company  
> with a couple of thousand installs of each.
>
>>   At the end of the day all are capable of doing the same
>>  thing.  Its like asking which is the best fruit: apple or
>>  orange?

I like grape :-)

> I know which one I consider the best.  That wasn't my question.  I'm  
> curious about server market share.

This is interesting question.

Google on "server market share mail transport agent" or check
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_transfer_agent , you get link to

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/sysadmin/2007/01/05/fingerprinting-mail-servers.html

"the most popular by far is still the old guard, Sendmail (12.3 percent),
with Postfix a relatively close second (8.6 percent). Exim and qmail are
roughly tied (5.3 and 5.0 percent, respectively) in third place."

This is from 01/05/2007.

Quite interesting article to read.

Osamu


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[lee-25]

On Wed, Jul 08, 2009 at 12:52:47PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote:

> On Wed,08.Jul.09, 01:43:02, lee wrote:
> >
> > Exim gives you control over the resources it uses. This allows you to
> > set up the MTA in such a way that it remains fully operational even
> > when having to deal with enourmous amounts of mail. I don't know if
> > postfix has features like that ...
>
> <flame on>
> Postfix doesn't need such options because it can always deal with
> enormous amounts of mail ;)
> </flame on>

It can't do that when the resources --- disk space, processing power
--- needed are not available. But an MTA can monitor these and adjust
the way it operates accordingly. That way, it can dampen spikes in the
load and continue to operate where it otherwise would be totally
overwhelmed and become unresponsive.

> Actually I have no ideea, but it doesn't really matter. The OP should
> investigate both and choose the one *he* likes better.

Yes --- I guess that's what he's trying to do and what made him ask
his question. And everyone tells him he better figure it out for
himself --- something not easy when you don't know where to start.


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