Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Always is the same: the best option is the best for you needs. So, the best could be any distro that you feel comfortable with. Obviously there're out there some distros which are server-oriented (CentOS, Debian) or desktop-oriented and so on, but really it doesn't matter. Choose your favorite one and do your job. The main important thing it's not the underlaying SO, it's to understand and master the smptd (Postfix) and popd/imapd (Dovecot). Personally I prefer BSD systems. -- I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro - Thank you all for the input.
We have decided to go with Centos as it is RedHat based and we hope similar to Fedora. At the same time I am going to start playing with a Ubuntu/Debian server just to see how easy it is to get the config and results we want. Once again thank you all for your input John A
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Il giorno mar, 01/12/2009 alle 13.15 -0800, Joe ha scritto: Why not just use Debian then, instead of Ubuntu? Because enterprise support is available for ubuntu, and also, if someone is familiar with ubuntu desktop already it makes sense for them to deploy ubuntu server if servers are needed. Enterprise support for postfix? :) The desktop approach could be true for *Suse distro, but I can't see any point in having a desktop approach to a postfix deployment. Or does Ubuntu server is a desktop only distro now? :o just my 2 cents... Christian -- Christian Surchi - christian _at_ truelite.it Truelite srl - Via Monferrato 6 - 50142 Firenze Tel. +39 055 7879597 - Fax +39 055 736 http://www.truelite.it
OT: need some advice as to distro
Sorry to bring this here, but we are having trouble setting up a Postfix/dovecot mail system. Background: We are a bunch of retirees, so cost is a factor in any decision. We all have IT experience, some of going back decades, however the world of Linux and its software is new to us all. We used the cook book approach to setting up our first mail system. It uses Postfix/Dovecot on top of Fedora 8 and so far it works like a charm. While the cook-book approach got up and running fairly easily I think we missed out on the learning side of things. However, there is a growing concern about the basic OS slipping too far behind on important changes, the same goes for some of the packages we are planning on using, so we have started looking at alternatives. Fedora - a little too dynamic for use as a server. This is to be expected as it is a development system which I don't think is aimed at a production like environment, plus the latest release seems very desktop oriented. Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Ubuntu 9.10 Server edition - I am not sure what to say here. While at first glance it seems to be an ideal solution a, free server distribution with a Canonical backing it up. However, the setup of some packages seems to us odd, overly complicated and arbitrary. openSUSE - not tied, but some concerns over the Novel /Microsoft deal. Thanks in advance John A
OT: need some advice as to distro
Sorry to bring this here, but we are having trouble setting up a Postfix/dovecot mail system. Background: We are a bunch of retirees, so cost is a factor in any decision. We all have IT experience, some of going back decades, however the world of Linux and its software is new to us all. We used the cook book approach to setting up our first mail system. It uses Postfix/Dovecot on top of Fedora 8 and so far it works like a charm. While the cook-book approach got up and running fairly easily I think we missed out on the learning side of things. However, there is a growing concern about the basic OS slipping too far behind on important changes, the same goes for some of the packages we are planning on using, so we have started looking at alternatives. Fedora - a little too dynamic for use as a server. This is to be expected as it is a development system which I don't think is aimed at a production like environment, plus the latest release seems very desktop oriented. Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Ubuntu 9.10 Server edition - I am not sure what to say here. While at first glance it seems to be an ideal solution a, free server distribution with a Canonical backing it up. However, the setup of some packages seems to us odd, overly complicated and arbitrary. openSUSE - not tied, but some concerns over the Novel /Microsoft deal. Thanks in advance John A
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Centos 5.x is my selection. You can also use packages from epel and dag's rpm repositories. -- Eero
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Eero Volotinen wrote: Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Centos 5.x is my selection. You can also use packages from epel and dag's rpm repositories. On my system I recompiled dovecot from rpms, since I also wanted to use sieve on mailserver. (this requires a bit hacks, but works fine) -- Eero
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On 12/1/2009 9:09 AM, John wrote: Fedora - a little too dynamic for use as a server. This is to be expected as it is a development system which I don't think is aimed at a production like environment, plus the latest release seems very desktop oriented. FC supposedly changes too much. I might use it on a test box, but never as anything close to a production server. But hell, our first Linux servers were Gentoo based and we ran with them for the first two years of testing the waters. (Prior to that we were a Novell NetWare / Windows Server / Solaris shop. Now we're down to just Linux Windows.) Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). There are two ways to use CentOS/RHEL. One is to stick only with the binary-compatible RPMs (i.e. the [base] [updates] repositories). In which case you're only going to get security fixes that Red Hat has backported into the versions that were there at release. Since RHEL 5 is getting a bit long in the tooth, that often means older versions of packages that are missing newer features. However, you can also choose to pull selective packages from other repositories like ATRPMs or RPMForge. At that point, you're no longer binary compatible with RHEL 5, but for the most part it doesn't matter. This is what most shops end up doing, they use as much as possible from the base/update repositories and only pull in specific packages from the 3rd party repo's. Personally, we chose CentOS for a bunch of reasons: - it closely tracks RHEL - books/training on RHEL 5 generally apply to CentOS 5 - migrating from CentOS 5 to RHEL 5 is a logical progression - if I have to bring in a consultant, it's easy to find those who are familiar with RHEL - I consider RHEL to be the gold standard of server-side Linux We're currently running CentOS 5 w/ postfix, dovecot, clamav-milter, amavisd-new, spf policy daemon, spamassassin and squirrelmail. I'm not overly concerned with the infighting that took place over the summer. It was worrying at the time, but seems to have been properly resolved in the following months. And even if CentOS did go belly-up, we'd simply take our knowledge and migrate fully to RHEL. Which, in terms of worst-case scenarios is not all that bad. Ubuntu 9.10 Server edition - I am not sure what to say here. While at first glance it seems to be an ideal solution a, free server distribution with a Canonical backing it up. However, the setup of some packages seems to us odd, overly complicated and arbitrary. Ubuntu LTS would probably be my 2nd choice, tied with openSUSE. I strongly considered SUSE back when I was debating what to replace Gentoo with. There's also Debian and a handful of others. openSUSE - not tied, but some concerns over the Novel /Microsoft deal.
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:30:36 +0200 Eero Volotinen eero.voloti...@iki.fi wrote: Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Centos 5.x is my selection. You can also use packages from epel and dag's rpm repositories. It suffers from Red Hat's liking for sendmail. The postfix package is aeons old. I would go with Ubuntu (probably 9.04 which is a long-term support version). -- John
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 9:39 AM, John Peach post...@johnpeach.com wrote: On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:30:36 +0200 Eero Volotinen eero.voloti...@iki.fi wrote: Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Centos 5.x is my selection. You can also use packages from epel and dag's rpm repositories. It suffers from Red Hat's liking for sendmail. The postfix package is aeons old. I would go with Ubuntu (probably 9.04 which is a long-term support version). -- John The age of a package only matters if you absolutely need a feature that's included in the newer version. All of the security fix are backported. If you do really need the newer versions, you can get RPMs from third party repositories.
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Centos is not likely to vanish, since it's just a re-branded version of Redhat Enterprise Linux. Since you already know Fedora, I'd suggest doing a base Centos install (no apps), then using the cheat sheet here: http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Amavisd. It sets up an additional repository that uses much more up-to-date apps than are in the Centos repository. Another option would be to install from source, which is actually not difficult at all, and is very similar to what you probably did 20 years ago, only easier. (the build scripts are much more polished than in years past). Terry
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On 12/1/2009 9:09 AM, John wrote: Sorry to bring this here, but we are having trouble setting up a Postfix/dovecot mail system. Background: We are a bunch of retirees, so cost is a factor in any decision. We all have IT experience, some of going back decades, however the world of Linux and its software is new to us all. We used the cook book approach to setting up our first mail system. It uses Postfix/Dovecot on top of Fedora 8 and so far it works like a charm. While the cook-book approach got up and running fairly easily I think we missed out on the learning side of things. However, there is a growing concern about the basic OS slipping too far behind on important changes, the same goes for some of the packages we are planning on using, so we have started looking at alternatives. soapbox I personally use Gentoo for all my Linux needs. There are several reasons for this. 1. It forces you to learn Linux. The handbook gives a great walk-through of how to set it up. 2. It is multi-platform; x86(_64), sparc(64), ppc(64), alpha, etc. 3. It is a build from source distro, but you don't need to know how. The Portage system takes care of individual packages and dependencies. You can tune and rebuild the entire system, if desired. 4. The base install is minimal; compile tools, python, perl and common commands. You get what you need, nothing more. 5. There is a security team in place to monitor vulnerabilities. 6. There is no OS upgrade. Only package updates. It will happily work forever updating single packages when *you* want. There is still an easy way to update everything as well. 7. There are stable, testing and experimental types of packages. All of which are easily accessible. 8. Tracking down dependencies is a non-issue. /soapbox I know other alternatives, such as FreeBSD, would also work well.
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
John wrote: Sorry to bring this here, but we are having trouble setting up a Postfix/dovecot mail system. Background: We are a bunch of retirees, so cost is a factor in any decision. We all have IT experience, some of going back decades, however the world of Linux and its software is new to us all. We used the cook book approach to setting up our first mail system. It uses Postfix/Dovecot on top of Fedora 8 and so far it works like a charm. While the cook-book approach got up and running fairly easily I think we missed out on the learning side of things. However, there is a growing concern about the basic OS slipping too far behind on important changes, the same goes for some of the packages we are planning on using, so we have started looking at alternatives. Fedora - a little too dynamic for use as a server. This is to be expected as it is a development system which I don't think is aimed at a production like environment, plus the latest release seems very desktop oriented. Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Ubuntu 9.10 Server edition - I am not sure what to say here. While at first glance it seems to be an ideal solution a, free server distribution with a Canonical backing it up. However, the setup of some packages seems to us odd, overly complicated and arbitrary. openSUSE - not tied, but some concerns over the Novel /Microsoft deal. Thanks in advance John A Personally, Debian Stable (currently Lenny) is my Linux of choice for production system. Package management via apt is second to none and everything is very well documented with a willing and able community for support. Why restate whats already written: http://www.debian.org/intro/why_debian When it comes down to it, the best distro is the one you know how to use. I would start with a distro that you are most comfortable with and know how to use the best. Good luck and kind regards, _Terry
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On 12/1/2009 10:08 AM, Brian Evans - Postfix List wrote: soapbox I personally use Gentoo for all my Linux needs. I wasn't going to say anything, but I'll add a 'me too' here. I've been using Gentoo only for our in house servers since 2005. They've all been through 2 major GCC version updates, and I've honestly never had a serious problem. A rolling release distro like Gentoo is really easy to keep completely up to date, and I never have to worry about being forced to use old/outdated software. There are several reasons for this. 1. It forces you to learn Linux. The handbook gives a great walk-through of how to set it up. 2. It is multi-platform; x86(_64), sparc(64), ppc(64), alpha, etc. 3. It is a build from source distro, but you don't need to know how. The Portage system takes care of individual packages and dependencies. You can tune and rebuild the entire system, if desired. 4. The base install is minimal; compile tools, python, perl and common commands. You get what you need, nothing more. 5. There is a security team in place to monitor vulnerabilities. 6. There is no OS upgrade. Only package updates. It will happily work forever updating single packages when *you* want. There is still an easy way to update everything as well. 7. There are stable, testing and experimental types of packages. All of which are easily accessible. 8. Tracking down dependencies is a non-issue. /soapbox I know other alternatives, such as FreeBSD, would also work well.
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Charles Marcus wrote: On 12/1/2009 10:08 AM, Brian Evans - Postfix List wrote: soapbox I personally use Gentoo for all my Linux needs. I wasn't going to say anything, but I'll add a 'me too' here. Are you really using lot of servers (like 100 pieces) with gentoo on production environment? -- Eero
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Terry L. Inzauro wrote: John wrote: Sorry to bring this here, but we are having trouble setting up a Postfix/dovecot mail system. Background: We are a bunch of retirees, so cost is a factor in any decision. We all have IT experience, some of going back decades, however the world of Linux and its software is new to us all. We used the cook book approach to setting up our first mail system. It uses Postfix/Dovecot on top of Fedora 8 and so far it works like a charm. While the cook-book approach got up and running fairly easily I think we missed out on the learning side of things. However, there is a growing concern about the basic OS slipping too far behind on important changes, the same goes for some of the packages we are planning on using, so we have started looking at alternatives. Fedora - a little too dynamic for use as a server. This is to be expected as it is a development system which I don't think is aimed at a production like environment, plus the latest release seems very desktop oriented. Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Ubuntu 9.10 Server edition - I am not sure what to say here. While at first glance it seems to be an ideal solution a, free server distribution with a Canonical backing it up. However, the setup of some packages seems to us odd, overly complicated and arbitrary. openSUSE - not tied, but some concerns over the Novel /Microsoft deal. Thanks in advance John A Personally, Debian Stable (currently Lenny) is my Linux of choice for production system. Package management via apt is second to none and everything is very well documented with a willing and able community for support. Why restate whats already written: http://www.debian.org/intro/why_debian When it comes down to it, the best distro is the one you know how to use. I would start with a distro that you are most comfortable with and know how to use the best. Good luck and kind regards, _Terry I took a quick look at Debian, but as it was very similar to Ubuntu (which I know is based on Debian) it looked to have the same problems from our perspective. An example, from the Postfix setup was the replacement of the LMTP process binary with a symlink to the SMTP binary. This may not be a real problem, perhaps the two binaries are the same, and Debian/Ubuntu are being smart, but as I could not find a rational for the change I have to wonder if this may be a problem in the future. Other examples are the strange reconfiguration of the Amavisd config files, changes to SASL setup, all make us a little nervous.
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On 12/1/2009, Eero Volotinen (eero.voloti...@iki.fi) wrote: Are you really using lot of servers (like 100 pieces) with gentoo on production environment? No, only 3 - what made you think 'our in-house servers' meant hundreds? I do know a few people who manage them in the hundreds with some custom scripting. But with the right skill set, someone could do the same with pretty much any distro they wanted to use - Gentoo just makes lots of things a whole lot easier... ;)
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 10:51:31AM -0500, John wrote: Terry L. Inzauro wrote: When it comes down to it, the best distro is the one you know how to use. I would start with a distro that you are most comfortable with and know how to use the best. +1 ... I started on Slackware and have not yet seen a need to change. I build Postfix from source, and regularly make upgrade to see what Wietse has been up to. He never disappoints me, it always works. I took a quick look at Debian, but as it was very similar to Ubuntu (which I know is based on Debian) it looked to have the same problems from our perspective. An example, from the Postfix setup was the replacement of the LMTP process binary with a symlink to the SMTP binary. This may not be a real problem, perhaps the two binaries are the Postfix rolled lmtp(8) into smtp(8) some years ago, but mine is a hard link, not a symlink. I don't think there's any reason a symlink would not work, but I don't see the benefit. Wastes an inode? same, and Debian/Ubuntu are being smart, but as I could not find a rational for the change I have to wonder if this may be a problem in the future. Other examples are the strange reconfiguration of the Amavisd config files, changes to SASL setup, all make us a little nervous. I agree, IMO Debian introduces too many bugs with their packaging decisions. I won't elaborate here because the whole thing was off topic to begin with, and Debian fans would try to counter. Let's say that I have lost much of the respect I had for Debian, and leave it at that. The bottom line is what Terry said, above. -- Offlist mail to this address is discarded unless /dev/rob0 or not-spam is in Subject: header
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On 01/12/2009 14:09, John wrote: Sorry to bring this here, but we are having trouble setting up a Postfix/dovecot mail system. Background: We are a bunch of retirees, so cost is a factor in any decision. We all have IT experience, some of going back decades, however the world of Linux and its software is new to us all. We used the cook book approach to setting up our first mail system. It uses Postfix/Dovecot on top of Fedora 8 and so far it works like a charm. While the cook-book approach got up and running fairly easily I think we missed out on the learning side of things. However, there is a growing concern about the basic OS slipping too far behind on important changes, the same goes for some of the packages we are planning on using, so we have started looking at alternatives. Try FreeBSD. http://www.freebsd.org/where.html - Mark
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
John Peach wrote: On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:30:36 +0200 Eero Volotinen eero.voloti...@iki.fi wrote: Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Centos 5.x is my selection. You can also use packages from epel and dag's rpm repositories. It suffers from Red Hat's liking for sendmail. The postfix package is aeons old. I would go with Ubuntu (probably 9.04 which is a long-term support version). Since we're talking linux distros I've used redhat, fedora, suse/sles, slackware and others and while they all have their strong points I prefer debian or ubuntu LTS for server deployments if at all possible. Package management is a snap, everything just works. BTW ubuntu 8.04 is the most recent LTS release, 10.04 next spring will be the next. Joe
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:39:06 -0500 John Peach post...@johnpeach.com wrote: On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:30:36 +0200 Eero Volotinen eero.voloti...@iki.fi wrote: Centos 5.4 - while it looks like a good choice, there has been some political infighting going on recently which makes us a little nervous about its future. In addition we have found that a number of the core packages we wish to use are out of date (postfix, dovecot, amavisd-new among them). Centos 5.x is my selection. You can also use packages from epel and dag's rpm repositories. It suffers from Red Hat's liking for sendmail. The postfix package is aeons old. I would go with Ubuntu (probably 9.04 which is a long-term support version). It's actually 8.04 that's LTS. The next release (10.04) will be also LTS (5 years). I am in favor of Ubuntu Server for Postfix related uses. Postfix is the standard MTA, so it's use is well documented, pretty much everything you might want to add on to Postfix is packaged so there's no need to hunt down external repositories, and it benifits both from Debian's strong package management system and well maintained Postfix package. Scott K
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Scott Kitterman put forth on 12/1/2009 12:22 PM: I am in favor of Ubuntu Server for Postfix related uses. Postfix is the standard MTA, so it's use is well documented, pretty much everything you might want to add on to Postfix is packaged so there's no need to hunt down external repositories, and it benifits both from Debian's strong package management system and well maintained Postfix package. Half your argument is based on Debian features. Why not just use Debian then, instead of Ubuntu? Especially for a headless server? I've been a Debian (non-GUI) user for almost 10 years. I've never touched Ubuntu, or any other distro. Debian has always come through for my server needs, so I've never considered anything else. Convince me why I should switch my Postfix server environment from Debian to Ubuntu. I'm curious to see how compelling your argument is. -- Stan
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Stan Hoeppner wrote: Half your argument is based on Debian features. Which are also, therefore, ubuntu features. Why not just use Debian then, instead of Ubuntu? Because enterprise support is available for ubuntu, and also, if someone is familiar with ubuntu desktop already it makes sense for them to deploy ubuntu server if servers are needed. Especially for a headless server? What difference does it make if the server is headless? How would that be an advantage for debian? I've been a Debian (non-GUI) user for almost 10 years. I've never touched Ubuntu, or any other distro. Debian has always come through for my server needs, so I've never considered anything else. Convince me why I should switch my Postfix server environment from Debian to Ubuntu. I'm curious to see how compelling your argument is. If you're happy with debian then there's no point - but let's turn the question around: Convince me why I should switch from ubuntu to debian. Let's see what arguments you have. Joe
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Joe j...@tmsusa.com wrote: Stan Hoeppner wrote: I've been a Debian (non-GUI) user for almost 10 years. I've never touched Ubuntu, or any other distro. Debian has always come through for my server needs, so I've never considered anything else. Convince me why I should switch my Postfix server environment from Debian to Ubuntu. I'm curious to see how compelling your argument is. If you're happy with debian then there's no point - but let's turn the question around: Convince me why I should switch from ubuntu to debian. Let's see what arguments you have. Joe How about you both realize that neither of you has enough information to make an objective decision, and that any kind of arguments you can come up with has more to do with what you're familiar with than anything else, and continuing the discussion along these lines only amounts to a holy war and nothing else. As for the original question, it all comes down to what you are comfortable with. The 2 main runners here are CentOS and Ubuntu. I've heard good things about Ubuntu but haven't tried it much. I use CentOS for all of my servers, and the main reason is that it's based on Redhat, and Redhat is the main Linux distro that all the big companies support. I'm not saying that they don't also support other distros, just that Redhat is usually first on the list. The yum package manager works quite well, and the days are long gone when there were dependency issues with rpms. I have very strong feelings against installing things from source, unless they are first built into a package. You want to be spending your time running the server and doing other things, not patting yourself on the back because you compiled all of your own packages.
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Brian Mathis wrote: On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Joe j...@tmsusa.com wrote: Stan Hoeppner wrote: I've been a Debian (non-GUI) user for almost 10 years. I've never touched Ubuntu, or any other distro. Debian has always come through for my server needs, so I've never considered anything else. Convince me why I should switch my Postfix server environment from Debian to Ubuntu. I'm curious to see how compelling your argument is. If you're happy with debian then there's no point - but let's turn the question around: Convince me why I should switch from ubuntu to debian. Let's see what arguments you have. Joe How about you both realize that neither of you has enough information to make an objective decision, and that any kind of arguments you can come up with has more to do with what you're familiar with than anything else, and continuing the discussion along these lines only amounts to a holy war and nothing else. As for the original question, it all comes down to what you are comfortable with. The 2 main runners here are CentOS and Ubuntu. I've heard good things about Ubuntu but haven't tried it much. with all due respect - would you please keep this very off topic noise from this usually very informative and helpful mailing list? If you don't fulfill my plea, I promise that I will claim that postfix runs best under cygwin ... -- Udo Rader, CTO http://www.bestsolution.at http://riaschissl.blogspot.com
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Udo Rader wrote: Brian Mathis wrote: On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Joe j...@tmsusa.com wrote: Stan Hoeppner wrote: I've been a Debian (non-GUI) user for almost 10 years. I've never touched Ubuntu, or any other distro. Debian has always come through for my server needs, so I've never considered anything else. Convince me why I should switch my Postfix server environment from Debian to Ubuntu. I'm curious to see how compelling your argument is. If you're happy with debian then there's no point - but let's turn the question around: Convince me why I should switch from ubuntu to debian. Let's see what arguments you have. Joe How about you both realize that neither of you has enough information to make an objective decision, and that any kind of arguments you can come up with has more to do with what you're familiar with than anything else, and continuing the discussion along these lines only amounts to a holy war and nothing else. As for the original question, it all comes down to what you are comfortable with. The 2 main runners here are CentOS and Ubuntu. I've heard good things about Ubuntu but haven't tried it much. with all due respect - would you please keep this very off topic noise from this usually very informative and helpful mailing list? Agreed, it wandered too far OT... end of thread, follow-ups to PM. Joe
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 2:20 PM, John j...@klam.ca wrote: Thank you all for your input, having looked at the responses and discussed amongst ourselves and as I am the grunt doing the work, we will probably go with Centos. Some of our reasoning was, it close to Fedora so we have some experience, there are several third party repositories that carry the latest packages and its fairly well documented. That said, I think I will setup an Ubuntu server as an experiment just to see how difficult/different it is in setup and operate. Once again thank you all John A In the end it doesn't matter. Just as long as you edit your configs with vi, wait no EMACS oh damn. -B
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On Tuesday 01 December 2009, Terry L. Inzauro wrote: snip Personally, Debian Stable (currently Lenny) is my Linux of choice for production system. Package management via apt is second to none and everything is very well documented with a willing and able community for support. Why restate whats already written: http://www.debian.org/intro/why_debian When it comes down to it, the best distro is the one you know how to use. I would start with a distro that you are most comfortable with and know how to use the best. After using RPM based distros for years I didn't know it could get better. That is until I tried Debian. I have installed and still maintain tens of servers and now I cringe when I have to work with RPM based distros. It just takes too much time. I thought Ubuntu LTS would be better but I have had more problems with it then Debian. For example, doing a distribution upgrade has rendered a system unbootable and made me boot from CD to fix it. I have never had a problem upgrading Debian. I have even upgraded several remotely without a problem. Try upgrading RH 3 to 4 to 5 remotely or otherwise. I don't know anyone who has worked with both Debian and RPM based distros enough to get good at them and chose to run RH or Centos. The worst thing about Debian is it comes default with Exim so I have to always do this: # apt-get --purge install postfix And that's it! Regards, David Koski da...@kosmosisland.com
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
David Koski put forth on 12/1/2009 10:45 PM: For example, doing a distribution upgrade has rendered a system unbootable and made me boot from CD to fix it. I have never had a problem upgrading Debian. I have even upgraded several remotely without a problem. Try upgrading RH 3 to 4 to 5 remotely or otherwise. I don't know anyone who has worked with both Debian and RPM based distros enough to get good at them and chose to run RH or Centos. I've in-place upgraded a couple of systems over the years from Woody all the way to Lenny (3 distribution upgrades) without any serious issues, including compiling and installing new custom kernels along the way (I do _only_ custom kernels). Sticking with LILO instead of trying to replace it with grub probably avoided many potential problems. Sticking with non initrd custom kernels allows me to keep using LILO. I hope I can use LILO forever. Probably wishful thinking. :) BTW, don't you really mean? # apt-get purge exim # apt-get install postfix ;) -- Stan
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
On Tuesday 01 December 2009, Stan Hoeppner wrote: BTW, don't you really mean? # apt-get purge exim # apt-get install postfix Last I tried I couldn't remove the MTA without replacement. The onliner apt-get --purge install postfix installs postfix and purges exim without complaining about not having an MTA. Regards, David
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Quoting David Koski da...@kosmosisland.com: On Tuesday 01 December 2009, Stan Hoeppner wrote: BTW, don't you really mean? # apt-get purge exim # apt-get install postfix Last I tried I couldn't remove the MTA without replacement. The onliner apt-get --purge install postfix installs postfix and purges exim without complaining about not having an MTA. Maybe it's now time to stop this offtopic message thread. -- Eero
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
David Koski wrote: On Tuesday 01 December 2009, Stan Hoeppner wrote: BTW, don't you really mean? # apt-get purge exim # apt-get install postfix Last I tried I couldn't remove the MTA without replacement. The onliner apt-get --purge install postfix installs postfix and purges exim without complaining about not having an MTA. Correct. You have to let apt remove exim during the process of installing postfix or it'll fail because some kind of MTA is mandatory. First thing I do with any Debian install as well. ~Seth
Re: OT: need some advice as to distro
Quoting Eero Volotinen eero.voloti...@iki.fi: Quoting David Koski da...@kosmosisland.com: On Tuesday 01 December 2009, Stan Hoeppner wrote: BTW, don't you really mean? # apt-get purge exim # apt-get install postfix Last I tried I couldn't remove the MTA without replacement. The onliner apt-get --purge install postfix installs postfix and purges exim without complaining about not having an MTA. Maybe it's now time to stop this offtopic message thread. True. This thread now sees /dev/null.
