[Gllug] Restating my problem

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Sun, 2003-03-09 at 18:48, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
> At 14:55 09/03/2003 +0000, you wrote:
> >Over the years, RedHat's version of sendmail has gradually grown further
> >from the sendmail available at sendmail.org. While I'm not sure exactly
> 
> About three years ago I switched to exim, simply because sendmail's arcane 
> configuration system makes building all but the simplest of mail systems a 
> painful exercise.

I'd have to disagree - the m4 macros make configuration relatively
straightforward for all but the most nightmarish of setups. I run all
mail for my company , with virtual hosting, and LMTP delivery to an IMAP
server with a cf file built from a 55 line (excluding comments) m4
source file. The other day, when the sendmail 8.12.8 was released I
upgraded by simply rebuilding the binaries, and running m4 across my
source file again to regenerate sendmail.cf.

> exim is light, compact, has a good security record and has the major 
> advantage of the configuration file being near English, as opposed to near 
> linenoise.

If you're editing sendmail.cf directly, you're doing something wrong.
There may well be reasons to prefer one MTA over another in certain
situations, but readability of a config file that needs neither reading
nor editing these days can hardly be called one of them.

Sendmail does require an understanding of mail systems to set up
correctly, and in that sense may not be as simple as other MTAs, but
given that understanding, which is IMHO necessary for anyone running a
real mail system anyway, it's not especially hard to handle. Vendors
have a bad habit of doing it a disservice by wrapping it with scripts
and suchlike to make it "easier", but actually just turning it into a
nightmare. It's the only debian package I've come across where my
distaste for what the packager has done to it is so extreme that I
actually resorted to building my own packages....

Mike.


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