Justin Hopper writes: > Wow. Of all the rants I've read on mailing lists, this is probably one > of the most interesting.
Thanks. I try to be entertaining even when ranting. > My colleagues and I went from dreams of lush green MTA lands to hating > DJB as well when we first started working with qmail instead of Sendmail. I think everyone does, once they find out what qmail CANNOT be made to do for no other reason than DJB disapproves of people being able to do it, even if every other MTA does it. > However, over the years, we have come to appreciate qmail's extremely > modular and simplistic nature. It has good points and bad points. > The modularity is the most important aspect, since this allows it to > grow from the minimalist MTA to a fully featured one. But only if you do not want to stray from the DJB path. I've just spent time digging around for an answer to a problem that just cropped up. One of our clients is on ADSL with dynamic IP. In the UK, ADSL lines go down about once a week and you almost invariably get a different IP (unless you pay THREE times as much for static). This client has decided they want their own Exchange server. And this is where the problems come in, because on average once a week they're going to get a new IP and there will be a period, before their line comes back up, when somebody else might get their old IP and they can't do anything to update the dynamic DNS. If the person who gets their old IP is running a mail server that acts as an open reley (which earlier versions of Exchange defaulted to doing) then that person is going to get their mail. So how to fix this problem? ETRN? Nope, qmail doesn't support it without patching, and it's not particularly safe anyway. Serialsmtp and autoturn? Apparently not, from what I've read since it expects static IP. Mailrdirsmtp and some custom "I'm alive" software at each end? Maybe, but I don't yet understand how to make maildirsmtp co-exist with vpopmail. Fetchmail running on the firewall we supplied them? Ideal except that Fetchmail reacts badly to some mailing lists and automated systems, I am told. > If it wasn't for this modularity, qmail might have died > off by now. And if it weren't for DJB's stubbornness, its usage might actually be growing instead of steadily declining. You look at any recommendations for *nix MTAs these days and qmail is not in the top three. A couple of years ago it was number one. > Good thing we have people like Inter7 that create extensions to qmail > that make it much more feature-rich, and also provide much better > documentation. The sqwebmail mailfilters add a lot of functionality people have come to expect from Exchange, although the vpopmail/qmailadmin team are still trying to figure out the best way of integrating it (I have my own private hack of vdeliver mail while they decide). However, my increasingly pointy-haired boss has decreed that we will switch to using Plesk to admin our web hosting and mail, and supports only IMP and uses some alternative to vpopmail to virtualize the domains (I haven't figured out what, yet). > Ultimately, it would be nice to continue to see MTA packages that > provide upper-level functions while keeping the gears of > qmail hidden away. Some things cannot be done that way. And deleting spam by mailfilters means you may accept a gigantic spam mail only to discard it automatically, which wastes bandwidth. > If these packages continue to improve functionality and easy of use, > hopefully one day in the near future the beast Exchange can be put to > sleep. I hope it will happen, but I am far from confident. I think it more likely that Postfix or Exim will take over. A point-and-click monkey can install Red Hat 8 with Postfix as part of the distro and configure it as easily as Windows and Exchange. Installing qmail and all the add-on packages required takes longer and requires a very steep learning curve. > Back to the matter at hand though, is there any feedback from the Inter7 > devs on the features that I mentioned for QmailAdmin? The main development lead for qmailadmin is now Tom Collins, with Inter7 playing a secondary role. Tom is on holiday right now. -- Paul Allen Softflare Support
