On Mon, Nov 10, 1997 at 09:16:01AM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote: : qmail might be excellent at what it does but it's incompatible with : /var/spool/mail.
Yeah, and? It allows you to streamline your quota setup. It also allows you to have a smaller /var. : the one time i installed it, i couldn't even get it : to use procmail as the local delivery agent instead of qmail-local Why do you need to do this? If your users need to sort their mail, it's quite easy to use procmail in conjunction with a stock qmail setup. You just need to read the FAQ. : there's also the 'minor' problem that only a few MUAs (i don't know of : one except for qmail-popper) will work with qmail's new maildir format. Uh, there's maildir2mbox, which you can use for that task. In addition, qmail comes with wrappers for pine and elm. : it's anti spam features don't seem as good as Claus Assman's check_* : rules for sendmail 8.8.x (which have been included with the latest : debian sendmail packages in unstable). they certainly don't seem : anywhere near as flexible. Uh, I've done a good deal of work constructing a set of check_* rules that I use to restrict relaying and drop spam. qmail was a snap by comparison. : but the biggest problem with qmail is the author's attitude. it would : be fine if he said "here's the way i like things to run, so that's the : default...but if you prefer the old standard ways then make this change : and that change and everything will run sweetly". but he doesn't do : that, he says "the old ways suck so you can't have them. you have to do : it my way even if my way sucks for your particular setup. tough luck". Yes, Dan Bernstein is called the "Psycho Programmer from Hell" by many. However, qmail rigidly implements the RFCs governing SMTP mail, which is a Good Thing, IMHO. : he goes on about nfs locking problems with NFS, ignoring the fact that : most NFS locking problems are related to sloppy programming. debian has : managed to produce an NFS safe locking library, so it's obviously not : impossible. and any site running an automounter daemon for user home : directories would be overloaded by qmail insisting on delivering mail to ~ : (and would still suffer from the NFS locking problem he is so worried : about) As opposed to the machine becoming overwhelmed from delivering to a /var partition that's mounted accross several machines, as you suggested with home dirs? : in summary, i think that his reasons for doing things the way he does : are, for the most part, ill-informed opinion and bigotry. there is some : substance to what he says but it's nowhere near as black and white as : the way he says it. : : finally, qmail is non-free. debian CAN'T use it as the default MTA. Hmmm.. It can be freely distributed, once the author approves of it. See ftp://koobera.math.uic.edu/www/qmail/dist.html for more info. -- Jason Costomiris <>< | "VMS is about as secure as a poodle [EMAIL PROTECTED] | encased in a block of lucite.... http://www.jasons.org/~jcostom/ | .... about as useful, too." #include <disclaimer.h> | --some guy I read on Usenet -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
