Re: Why was exim selcted as the default MTA?

[Jor-el <jorel@ibm.net>]

On 12 Jun 1999, Martin Bialasinski wrote:

> 
> >> "J" == Jor-el  <jorel@ibm.net> writes:
> 
> J> ... and what are my alternatives?
> 
> smail, sendmail, postfix maybe others I forgot. You can always choose
> the MTA you like best.

	I guess I should have clarified my question a bit more. I've heard
that sendmail is prone to security problems, and qmail is non-free. Exim
is supposed to be better than smail. Which leaves me with postfix - of
which I havent heard anything. Please dont regard this as flamebait. I am
just trying to sort through various sources of information.

> 
> There was a flamebait about this some time ago, you may want to browse
> the archives, and I would be happy, if there wouldn't be one this
> time.
> 

	I would love to search the archives, but as I mentioned in my
note, the search doesnt work, presently. So if anyone can send me links,
that would be appreciated.

> J> The designer of exim has explicitly stated that exim was designed
> J> with 24x7 connectivity to the internet assumed. Because of that
> J> assumption, people who use exim on dialup machines, or machines
> J> having some other intermittent connection, have to workaround some
> J> problems. And since the number of such machines is growing, I think
> J> Debian should reconsider this decision.
> 
> I haven't heared that another MTAs do this better than exim. They
> seem to be alike with respect to this.
> 
> J> Consider the case where a mail is addressed to an external address
> J> as well as local ones. Now a copy of the mail will have to be made, and
> J> only the copy destined for the external world will have to be rewritten.
> 
> So why don't you just headers_remove and headers_add in the transport
> that sends the mail to your ISP's MTA?
> 

	I dont understand this solution. What does this do, and how does
this work. Can you give me a rough idea of where to look in the exim docs?

> Ciao,
> 	Martin
> 

Thanks,
Jor-el