[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Manoj Srivastava) wrote on 14.08.00 in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >>"John" == John Goerzen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > >> No real reason? Only one package can listen in on port 25, and > > John> There is no real reason that all must listen on port 25. > > Then you and I have very different opinions on what a working > MTA is. Indeed, the SMTP RFC's differ with your opinion as well AFAIK most MTAs can be convinced to use a different port. I wonder why that is? I know that Exim has support to talk to a SMTP server on an arbitrary port. I see no reason to assume other MTAs can't do the same. I wonder why that is? I have a machine running two different Exim konfigurations at the same time, one not involving listening on any port. Separate spools, separate logs. I wonder why one of those couldn't be a different MTA? As for NNTP, you've heard of port nntps? And then there's the option of running server-to-server NNTP on arbitrary ports. > John> These aren't real reasons at all. > > Given that, you have a curious definition of > ``real''. Unfortunately, I do not think I find your definition of > real very interesting. His seems to be about the same as mine. Your "real reasons" boil down to "I don't know why you'd want to do that", which is a piss-poor reason for *anything*. > One should optimize for the most common case. I think people The rule should be: make easy things easy, and make hard things possible. > who can maneuver around the port numbers can also recompile or use > dpkg -x effectively. There's a rather big difference between putting "demon_smtp_port=1234" into a config and those other options. > I am unsure that the results are quite worth the effort that > needs be expended. One rather common case with MTAs is switching from one to another with a non-empty spool. Rather hard when they don't coexist peacefully. You don't even need alternate ports for that - only the new MTA needs to actually run a SMTP listener, the old one only needs a queue runner. MfG Kai