Re: How about maildir support?

[spacey 30minutes netcreations com]

[Sorry to respond so late, I'm behind on my mail]

On Mon, Jun 08, 1998 at 06:34:09PM +1000, Matthew Hawkins wrote:
> At 09:49AM on Mon, Jun 08, 1998, torben fjerdingstad <unitfj-gnome@tfj.rnd.uni-c.dk> sent:
> > Unfortunately RedHat linux still ships with sendmail.
> 
> I can't see what's so "unfortunate" about that.
> Sendmail is very well tested, actively maintained, very
> configurable, and most importantly, the documentation is
> mostly complete and very accurate.

Which version of sendmail are you talking about?  Last I heard, the
8.9.0 tree still had bugs in it's anti-relay feature (i.e. configured
server will still relay about 1 of 6 messages), without which an MTA
is unsound on the internet.  I'll not further comment on sendmail.
Mostly I wanted to clear up your misconceptions.  Like the idea that
complete documentation is the most important part of the program.
While it's nice, I don't think that anyone should have to pay for a
book that's thicker then a bible just to be able to send mail,
especially when many other mailers have proven that it's just not
necessary.
 
> Qmail's documentation is incomplete & quite inaccurate in parts,

I've used qmail for 2 years now, and there has yet to be an inaccuracy
that I've run into.  Please demonstrate an inaccuracy that isn't the
result of a mis-reading.

> many features like virtual hosting and anti-spam do not work,

Anti-relaying measures work very well, and are on by default.  Virtual
hosting works, and works easily and more configurably then sendmail's
(i.e. you can forward e-mail to a directory owned by your vhost
customer, and let them add and remove their own users, without needing
special privliges).

> it's not actively maintained (sorry, I can't count a new release
> 15 months later "active") 

1.03 is out, about 1 month after 1.02.  However, there was only 1
glaring bug in 1.02, and it didn't affect mail delivery.  New features
and changes were *tested* before release, you see.

> and the fallback defence "it's more
> secure than sendmail" is getting rather old and worn.

However true it is, eh?  Never mind that it's easier to configure, the
anti-relaying measures have worked for 2 years now, at least one large
site (estimated .5 million deliveries/day) running 0.7x (or so) hasn't
had to upgrade from that early beta stage because it's been solid,
fast, and secure for that time period?
 
> > I have replaced it with qmail on all the machines I have.
> > And I use maildir mailboxes , because they never get destroyed
> > when mail comes in at the same time the mailbox is updated by
> > the MUA.
> 
> I don't have that problem with sendmail and mbox boxes.  All
> maildir does is add three directories of complexity and cause
> headaches trying to get normal services like email reading and
> retrieval working properly, whereas other MTAs work out of the
> box.

It doesn't necessarily have to do with the MTA, it has to do with the
great variety of local delivery agents, and MUAs.  Maildir ensures
that even if an OS has a problem with flock(), or if you have a
delivery agent that's been incorrectly compiled (i.e. if procmail is
compiled using flock and a pop3d using dot-locking) you can't lose a
thing, and won't ever have to worry.  This kind of error can happen
any time you re-compile any of your mail tools.
 
> If you're using qmail for the speed, try Zmailer instead.  It's
> easier to get going, the documentation is accurate, the people
> are friendly, you don't need to mess around a _lot_ (at all, even)
> to get client applications working, plus its faster anyway.

Wow, zmailer's easier to get going?  Is that why it couldn't pre48
auto-configure itself for redhat 5?  The documentation is a bit on the
sketchy side.  I.e. neither the changes file nor the manual listed why
pre50 was rejecting mail sent out as "user@host.name" when it detected
my hostname as "mybox.host.name".  It logged the error, and bounced,
but it never told me why.  Especially strange since the configuration
was a) standard, out of the box, and b) the same config as on older
linux boxes running zmailer pre48 (i.e. the default configuration
hadn't been changed).

Please get your facts straight, and don't spread FUD just because you
don't like the product.  Qmail is designed and written
clearly, simply, and securely.  It happens to beat the pants off of
anyting else in terms of actual speed.  

A quick note: Zmailer used to, and still may use an algorithm that
allocates vmem exponentially, so using it to deliver large lists can
become impractical quickly.  The router queue can easily be overloaded
by any significant volume of email.  The the point that I had to
abandon zmailer was where the order of 10-20 thousand messages would
take over 12 hours to deliver, where with qmail the same queue will
clear in under 2 hours.

Also please remember: if a product that's being used actively is not
updated for a long time, and its users aren't complaining, it is a
*good* thing.  It means that no significant problems have been found,
and in the case of qmail it meant that the author was putting his next
version under significant regression tests so no new version would be
released until it was proveably stable and compatible.  

-Peter