Well, consider this a reply to several messages in this thread. >>>>> "aj" == Austad, Jay <austad at marketwatch.com> writes: >> things. Just because you guys can't understand sendmail doesn't >> mean it shouldn't be used. I understand what we're not all system >> administrators aj> It's not that at all. I administered a fairly large setup of aj> sendmail boxes for about 4 years, with some fairly complicated and aj> annoying configs. I just think that there are some much better aj> alternatives to it now. I keep thinking back on the constant aj> updates for security problems with it, and the m4 crap, and the aj> fact that it has to run as root. Evil. Configs: Eric Allman has threatened (probably after a few too many glasses of Cabernet) to make the sendmail config a human-hostile binary, just to force people to use the M4 config generator. Most of the Sendmailiens I work with don't muck with raw rulesets because they don't have to. With the commercial version, it's point and click (with context-sensitive help). My M4 config for my home mail server is below, FWIW. It's a far cry from The Old Days(tm). Creeping feature-itis? Certainly. But there's a demand for the complexity. And when the IETF stops making new standards, perhaps the creep will slow. Security: since the founding of the Sendmail Consortium (http://www.sendmail.org/, not be to confused with the Endmail Consortium, http://www.endmail.org/) and Sendmail, Inc., I'm not aware of any non-DoS exploitable security holes in sendmail. Its history has been bad, but the last couple years have made a *huge* difference in the quality of its code. Fixing the running-as-root thing will have to wait for Sendmail 9. Performance: sendmail 8.12, which may be out in a couple of months, will compare very favorably to qmail performance-wise. Surprising, but that's what folks in the lab are saying. {shrug} How many people are using it: no one knows, primarily because no one uses the same methodology. Even DJB has changed the methodology of his surveys. Unless you nail methodology down, you might as well choose "tastes great" or "less filling", for all the good it'll do you. License: qmail's situation is pretty nasty, IMO, because it creates the huge patch quilt you need to deal with if you want to integrate with certain POP servers, IMAP servers, delivery filters, TLS support, etc. Religion: I've been a sysadmin professionally for sendmail and qmail. I made the choice in those situations, not handed down From On High or due to tradition. I've got postfix installed on my laptop. Postfix has got much more promise, IMO, than qmail because it has a much better license. Corporate religion/mindset: Nah, I'll shaddup. -Scott --- snip --- VERSIONID(`@(#)Snookles.mc 0.9 24 Jan 2000') OSTYPE(bsd4.4)dnl define(`_USE_ETC_MAIL_',`1')dnl define(`confCW_FILE',`/etc/mail/sendmail.cw')dnl define(`PROCMAIL_PATH',`/usr/bin/procmail')dnl define(`PROCMAIL_MAILER_PATH',`/usr/bin/procmail')dnl define(`confAUTO_REBUILD', True)dnl define(`confME_TOO', True)dnl define(`confMESSAGE_TIMEOUT', `5d/4h')dnl define(`confPRIVACY_FLAGS', `needvrfyhelo,noexpn')dnl define(`confQUEUE_LA', `1')dnl define(`confREFUSE_LA', `3')dnl DOMAIN(generic)dnl MASQUERADE_AS(snookles.com)dnl FEATURE(always_add_domain)dnl FEATURE(local_procmail)dnl MAILER(smtp)dnl MAILER(procmail)dnl