On 04-Jan-99 17:12:52, Dave Sill wrote something about "Re: Why Red Hat is not
distributing qmail". I just couldn't help replying to it, thus:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>In some situations Qmail is less efficient than sendmail, and its
>>performance is sorely lacking.
> Every complex system has weaknesses.
Which is a poor excuse for at least some of qmail's weaknesses.
>>Qmail does not verify envelope sender addresses, right out of the
>>box.
> Nor should it. The bounce mechanism works.
It does? Then perhaps it is qmail that is broken? Because I sure see lots
of double bounces.
>>Qmail does not support RBL, right out of the box.
> Nor should it. There's an add-on to do that.
RBL support, these days, in a world that isn't as perfect as qmail was
designed to view it, is not an option, but rather a requirement. Out of the
box. But as long as you are not allowed to distribute such a setup, there is
little point in discussing it.
>>Qmail's logging is virtually nonexistent.
> Wrong. qmail-smtpd's logging is minimal,
No, it is non-existant.
> but qmail's logging, in general, is quite adequate.
It is, in general, quite adequate for performance monitoring. When it
comes to helping the postmaster find and possibly correct problems, it leaves
something to be desired. Here are some of the less useful error messages that
spring to my mind right now:
Sorry, unable to establish an SMTP connection.
This one is similiar to the classic "unable to open file" with no mention
of the file name, except you get two for the price of one. Not only does it
not mention which server it tried to connect to, it also doesn't mention why the
connection couldn't be established. The postmaster can always try out each
errorcode from errno.h in turn and see which fix starts the mail flowing.
Sorry, homedir is writable.
This is a candidate for the "Obfuscated MTA Error Message of the Year"
award. Of course the homedir is writable, how else would you deliver the
mail? So the postmaster can waste valuable productive time needlessly digging
through documentation so that qmail-local can be strlen("group or world ")
bytes shorter.
CNAME lookup failed temporarily.
Only two addresses to guess from. Wauw, 50% chance of guessing the right
one in your first attempt. Of course qmail knows which one it is, but it
won't tell you. No need to be helpful to the postmaster.
>>Certain things Qmail can do better than sendmail, but there's still a lot
>>of functionality that many people want, and Qmail does not have, unless
>>you go out and grab a bunch of other software as well.
> Modularity.
Some people would find a search-and-replace module for a text editor
taking modularity beyond a reasonable level. I'm one of those people.
Modularity doesn't prohibit you from putting together a set of modules
nicely integrated with the base package.
[cut]
>> DJB is making demands that nobody else in the entire world is
>>making, and, no matter how good Qmail is, I do not see why it is so
>>special that it needs it.
> Dan doesn't need to justify his actions to you or anyone else
> here. The fact is that he owns qmail, and he can redistribute it under
> whatever terms he chooses. He's explained his rationale.
Most of it. I'm still waiting for the rest, but I'm not holding my breath
and I'm past the point where it would make a difference.
> I've tried to restate it.
Which is completely pointless, IMHO. When Dan says someting (as opposed to
just sending streams of words to the list), he's usually very clear. No
ambiguities.
Regards,
/ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻTŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ\
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