Thus spake Jessica U. Gothie ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> I agree that people attempting to install and run mail servers should be
> fairly technically clued, comfortable with the OS the mail server stuff is
> to be installed on, and able to read/understand documentation. In an ideal
> world, this would be the case. We do not live in an ideal world.
I understand qmail well enough to offer commercial support for it.
To me, this mailing list is the only place where I can get software
announcements and which is there to "discuss qmail", as Dan's page
states clearly.
This mailing list is right now completely useless to me.
Apparently the gates of hell have opened and spewed forth millions of
undead whose brain has decomposed to a degree that they consider Windows
an operating system. And several thousand of them came to the qmail
list and made it completely worthless to waste time reading it or even
reading the subjects to find emails that are actually worth reading.
No, we are not in an ideal world. But there is no reason why Robin
shouldn't be allowed to at least have fun with the army of darkness that
has invaded here. If a zombie using Outlook (that alone warrants an
afterlife in hell) is allowed to post his drivel here, not being able to
quote properly, having more spelling errors than words, not being able
to state his question in a way that makes an answer even possible,...
then Robin is OF COURSE allowed to make fun of him. In public.
If a single zombie leaves this list because of that, it was worth it.
> In the real world, your mail server is crashing every three days, it's on a
> non-multitasking OS, on proprietary software. It auths out of a flat text
> file. Oh, and 1200 users are going to jump up and down on your corpse if
> you don't come up with something pronto.
I don't know in what world you are living, but not in mine.
None of my production mail servers ever crashed on me.
The reason may be that I only touch stuff that I understand.
You should try that, too. It really helps.
And if you really do have 1200 users, you should hire someone to install
qmail for you instead of breaking anything by touching vital systems
yourself.
Having an incompetent pimple faced fresh-from-windoze-college system
administrator install an MTA for 1200 users is so stupid that you
deserve all the pain you get for that.
> Linux scares you and you can barely get it installed and to a reasonably
> recent patch level. You don't understand users and groups. File
> permissions are a mystery. You know a teeny bit of C and nothing about
> Perl but you have the llama book. You don't really understand cron, chmod,
> chgrp, or adduser. You have JUST figured out how to look at man pages
> with different numbers.
Do you try to repair your engine when your car breaks down and you have
no clue? Do you? If your parachute looks like it the tear lines are
missing, will you use duct tape and fix it yourself just before you jump?
No, of course not!
Would you subscribe to some goofy mailing list and pester people whose
names you wouldn't even remember about your engine?
You would drive to a garage and have an expert look at your problem.
And the same should be true for your email setup.
There is no excuse for idiotic DIY lusers who need to prove themselves
how manly they are by "fixing" your email server.
"If Jones can do it, I can do it!"
"Look? It says 'easy to use' right here on the box!"
> For those who never ever asked "what's a compiler?", for those who never
> deleted /dev/null or other relatively important part of the system, for
> those who never undertook a project with half-vast clue, for those who
> never failed to solve a bloody obvious problem without asking for help --
> my hat's off to you. Ya'll are smarter, better folk than I am.
It's not a question of intelligence.
It's a question of ethics and moral.
If I have the choice to bother one friend or three hundred people all
over the world, and some of them even have to pay just to download the
dumb question, I would OF COURSE ask my friend!
And it's not just that I don't want to bother people without need.
Remember that there are potentially thousands of people on mailing
lists. Many of them are just there to get their own dumb questions
answered.
It is not unheard of that there are conflicting answers, and all of them
may be incorrect!
> For those who are where I was...Try. Try again. Reread the documentation
> at least twice, hopefully three times. Read the FAQ. Remove and reinstall
> the software. Do all of the tests that come with the install package.
> Read the hints at the bottom of the qmail web page, plus check out the
> other web pages referred to therein. Read the man pages for
> qmail/tcpserver/whatever. Try again. And again. Restart qmail, just for
> giggles.
Uh, excuse me, but where did you learn your trade? On Windows? Not at all?
I am happy that you didn't say we should reboot our servers from time to
time, "just to make sure"?
Try to understand the problem.
Try again.
Use ps, strace and lsof to understand what is happening.
Read the documentation.
The punch line was correct, though. Only bother others when you have
spent at least one day with the problem and slept over it.
Felix
