[wplug] Needing help with sendmail

Jonathan S. Billings billings at negate.org
Mon Mar 6 06:48:23 EST 2006


Brian A. Seklecki wrote:
> Sendmail might be free, but it will cost you money in time trying to
> understand the discord that is the MC/CF config file.  The only
> acceptable usage these days seems to be for localhost-only local MTA
> service with a "SmartHost" statement forwarding the mail to a more
> modern-MTA with a config file sytax with comprehensible stanzas.

I'm sure this wasn't intended to start a vi/emacs-style flamewar...

Sendmail's configuration is extremely flexible.  On top of that, the
MILTER interface gives you the ability to use external resources inline
with message processing.

I think that any open source package of a size like sendmail is going to
require some complexity in it's configuration.  Sure, there are other
mail packages out there that might seem to be simpler, but when you want
to use them in a complex configuration in an enterprise-level network,
you'll notice that the flexibility of sendmail often wins out.

I agree that wrapping your head around the cf rules can be painful, but
it is very powerful.  It wasn't intended for simplicity of being read by
a person, but by a computer.  The m4-based configurations are often
pretty easy to pick up as a beginner.


-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>


More information about the wplug mailing list