Re: MDA's was: Yet another Linux distribution! :-)

[wrl@gandalf.wconsult.com]

'From Bill Leach <bleach@bellsouth.net>'

Sendmail configuration is tough but it is also the best documented MTA
bar none!  The O'Reliey book alone on sendmail is 2 1/5" thick.  Probably 
close to everything that has ever been done with mail has been done with
sendmail (and possibly some things that can only be done with sendmail --
and NO I don't know of any examples personally).

Exim is also a good MTA.  It is easier to configure than sendmail, supposedly
faster (though I don't consider that a concern for dailup use - the line 
itself is far too limiting for that to matter).  Like the 'conventional'
sendmail distribution though, the exim.deb appears to me to be almost 
hopelessly confusing and inadequate as far as the dailup user is concerned.
And by 'dailup user' I mean a user that uses a typical personal account with
an ISP and may or may not have a local area network.

I will take a look at sendmail because of Manoj's remarks since the only
significant disadvantage to sendmail that I could see is that it can be a
real tough one to set up properly (if you are a continuously connected
mail server then it is almost a 'snap' to set up using the conventional
sendmail configuration).

I don't consider myself to be stupid but the e-mail issue is really
raising doubts...

It should not require days of study of various documents, man pages,
HOWTOs, example configuration files, etc. just to get an email system
that:

1)  Places a vaild (to the ISP) From header on all internet bound mail
    (no matter what the user's local network name might be).

2)  Send all 'outbound' mail to a smarthost depending upon which ISP
    is in use.

I realize that #1 is not really the MTA's 'responsibility' but it is the
logical place for this to be accomplished since any place else in the 
'chain' is not unique (ie:  there are too many mail composing software
packages, most (AFAIK) won't let you muck with the headers (and really
shouldn't).

#2 IS the responsibility of the MTA but AFAIK none were designed with the
idea that you might have different 'smarthosts' as different times.


-- 
best,
-bill
                bleach@BellSouth.net
           b.leach@usa.net  LinuxPC@Hotmail.com
from a 1996 Micro$loth ad campaign:
"The less you know about computers the more you want Micro$oft!"
         See!  They do get some things right!


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