Server Software

-- BillMcGonigle - 20 Feb 2006

MTA

Votes for:

• Sendmail
• postfix
  • BillMcGonigle
• qmail
• exim
  • ColeTuininga

Experience with (admin level):

• Sendmail
  • BillMcGonigle
  • ColeTuininga (not in a long time though)
• postfix
  • BillMcGonigle
• qmail
  • BillMcGonigle
• exim
  • ColeTuininga

Reasons for:

• Sendmail
  • Installed by default -- BillMcGonigle - 20 Feb 2006
  • Would be useful to relearn to use it since it is fairly ubiquitous. -- ColeTuininga - 21 Feb 2006
• postfix
  • Resonably easy to configure for most anything you can think of. Support from most 3rd party packages (notably mailman). Fast. -- BillMcGonigle - 20 Feb 2006
• qmail
• exim
  • Highly configurable, configuration quite readable, easy to configure. -- ColeTuininga - 21 Feb 2006

Reasons against:

• Sendmail
  • Limiting - hard to do handstands. Slow. Most people can only work in .mc -- BillMcGonigle - 20 Feb 2006
  • Cryptic to configure. -- ColeTuininga - 21 Feb 2006
• postfix
• qmail
  • Bizzare patch-acceptance policy and license. Good installs typically require lots of 3rd party patches of variable quality. -- BillMcGonigle - 20 Feb 2006
• exim
  • Not a lot of 3rd party support; needs wrappers for some common tasks. -- BillMcGonigle - 20 Feb 2006
    • Bill - can you elaborate on these? -- ColeTuininga - 21 Feb 2006
  • Not as widely known, fewer admins tend to be familiar with it. -- ColeTuininga - 21 Feb 2006

Anti-Spam

• MailScanner
  • BillMcGonigle
• AMaVIS

• SpamAssassin
• Spamhaus rbl(s)

Experience with (admin level):

• MailScanner
  • BillMcGonigle
• AMaVIS

• SpamAssassin

Reasons for:

• MailScanner
  • Easy to configure, modify configuration, very flexible. Auto-updates for ClamAV, RulesDuJour. Integrates SpamAssassin without separate daemon. Disarms spam, phishing, viruses, "active" HTML mail. -- BillMcGonigle - 20 Feb 2006
• AMaVIS

Reasons against:

• MailScanner
  • Somewhat CPU intensive. I've never seen decent hardware CPU bound by it though. -- BillMcGonigle - 20 Feb 2006
• AMaVIS