Dave Anderson wrote:
quoted text
> On Fri, 13 Aug 2010,jy-p@fixedpointgroup.com  wrote:
>
>    
>> sendmail is fine if you have a few users at a relatively quiet domain,
>> all of whom you want to have system accounts on the mailserver.
>>      
> You imply that sendmail is _only_ fine for such limited uses, which is
> certainly not true in my experience; I'm curious as to why you believe
> this.
>
>    


please don't try to put words in my mouth, it makes you look stupid. at 
no point did i say what you claim i 'implied' i.e. that it is the *only* 
use case, you assume too much.

sendmail is a piece of software that is historically notorious for 
security problems and has only been tuned up to get in the openbsd tree 
with input from some very sharp people. that says nothing about its 
ability to handle load, which it obviously can do just fine based on the 
ubiquity of its past and present usage as an mta.


quoted text
> It doesn't require (or, AFAICT, benefit in any way) from users having
> any sort of account (let alone a system account) on the mailserver
> itself, and it's not hard to set up multiple domains on the same server.
>
>    


how about you *read* my earlier email before responding to shit that 
wasn't in it. try setting up a mailserver that does the following with 
sendmail and you will see the limitations of sendmail:

- mail delivers to either mbox or maildir on the same machine as the mta
- there is a per email address login for users who do not have a system 
account
- host multiple domains and want separate mailboxes with separate logins 
to access each mailbox
- authentication is done against a single password store for pop/imap 
and smtp auth
- a copy of every email passing through the server is kept for auditing 
purposes

sendmail works great when the final destination is a system user who may 
or may not run an mta on their workstation. this used to be one of the 
most common ways to configure a unix system e.g. students at a 
university who have shells and can register for classes on the same system.


quoted text
> While I haven't needed to do it myself, there's plenty of anecdotal
> evidence of large, busy mailservers running sendmail.
>
>    


call CNN, this is serious news. thanks for letting us all know about this!


quoted text
> I'm _not_ arguing whether sendmail is better or worse than the
> alternatives; while I've looked at a few others, I've never used any of
> them -- so I don't have any real basis for an opinion.  I _have_ been
> using sendmail (on a light-duty, mostly-home mailserver) for 15 years.
>
>    


so why, exactly, did you choose to respond to my email? oh, that's 
right, you're a douchebag. i love rhetorical questions.

thanks for cutting snippets out of my original email, taking them out of 
context and being annoying.