Rick Romero wrote:
DAve wrote:


<soapbox>
Patch smatch, if it's a patch everyone gets to beat qmail up and scream at each other about what a wasted never updated POS qmail is. So patches are bad bad bad. Only software that is poor and decrepit uses patches. But, let someone add that patch to the source code and bundle up a new package and suddenly every new user who posts a question is told "You need the latest version". I have seen this many many times on many many maillists.

We have not had to make a security update to our qmail installs in the 5 years we have been running them. All it took was running "patch < somediff" a few times ONCE during the initial install.

Lets be honest here, most minor version upgrades in OSS are the result of contributed patches (developer or user). Yet no one is claiming that vpopmail/postfix/perl/ruby/python is a patchy POS after we see the developers accepting patches from users and rolling out an upgrade.
I think it would be nice to feel like to owner/author of qmail was actually behind it. And to do that, he should be improving upon it - that is, accepting at least the patches that we all use. Obviously it's not a complete product, unless you can point me to a substantial 'stock qmail' userbase. Nobody can even provide binaries for the 'lessers' among us - so they will never use it.

Point taken, but the constant "qmail is patchy" as an excuse to belittle the software and it's users is getting on my nerves of late. I have also found myself falling into the "if you can't build an email server, you shouldn't be administering one" camp, blame it on the fact that I deal weekly with mis-configured Exchange servers and Barracuda installs. I ranted 8^o



I propose that someone create a shell script that installs qmail and a set of user selected "Modules" chosen from a menu. Vpopmail could be a "Module", chkuser could be a "Module", bigip could be a "Module". You could even rerun the script to add/subtract "Modules", much like Apache Toolbox. Maybe then people would get over their aversion to "patches" in qmail.
</soapbox>

Check out Matt Simerson's Mail::Toaster - I think the back end is even in CPAN now..
www.tnpi.biz.

I've totally felt like a 'Matt schill' lately, but IMHO what he has done just rocks.

Never feel bad for giving good advice. We already have a standard install procedure we use, or we would likely be running Matt's Toaster as well. I have never heard anything bad about it.

DAve
--
Three years now I've asked Google why they don't have a
logo change for Memorial Day. Why do they choose to do logos
for other non-international holidays, but nothing for
Veterans?

Maybe they forgot who made that choice possible.

Reply via email to