Sendmail still default?

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 15:13 +0200, Lutz Lange wrote:
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> shmuel siegel schrieb:
> > Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> >> Not that I particularly want to shoot ambulances, but those are not
> >> good arguments.
> >>
> >>   
> > They would be lousy arguments for changing to sendmail but they are
> > fairly good arguments for keeping it. One needs a fairly compelling
> > reason to change something that is already there. The above arguments
> > amount to "there is no compelling reason to change".

> What about : it's not easy to configure it right or to learn how to do
> it. If you already know it, you might be fine. If not you might be in
> trouble.

	If you're old school and insist on editing the .cf I might agree with
you but that then contradicts your "If not" clause.  If you don't know
what you're doing you might be deceived by complainers into thinking
that's how it's configured and that's how you have to do it.  

	OTOH...  The .m4 configurations are not very complicated.  Very
straight forward to enabled and disable features and configure names and
tokens and files.  I don't find the m4 interface to be any more
complicated to configure than say smail or postfix and a hell of a lot
simpler than many other utilities.  I find sendmail far easier to
configure than, say, squid or other complex utilities requiring acls and
filters, which we largely take for granted.  I also find that sendmail
generally works just fine out of the box for simple systems.

> And: It's second choice for an MTA for most people i know.
> I may know the wrong people but as an instructor i meet quite a lot of
> them :)

	Not quite sure I know how to parse that last one.  Do you mean that
sendmail is a second choice?  Or what is a second choice?  I'm not sure
one what the "It" is that you are referring to or how you are arguing
there.

	You mean that people given a list would place sendmail second?  I know
a lot of people in the business and have known a lot of them down
through the last two decades.  I know people who are passionate about
QMail and I know Wietse and I happen to think Postfix is wonderful and
I've personally contributed to the Smail project many many years ago and
I've even worked with and ported and configured MMDF (anyone remember
MMDF, the default MTA on SCO Unix for many many years?).  I would not
make the statement that most would put Sendmail second.  I would not
make the statement that most would put Sendmail first.  I know that both
Postfix and Sendmail are very popular.  Sendmail is well established as
the default with a reasonably easy option to switch to Postfix, and I
see no compelling reason to switch.

> Cheers
> Lutz

	Regards,
	Mike
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!

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