Re: OS Recommendations?

James Zuelow wrote:
> I second the Postfix recommendation. I'm not smart enough to have ever
> figured out SendMail configuration without Webmin, but I can grok Postfix's
> config files easily. (I stand in awe of anyone who uses SendMail and doesn't
> rely on a 3rd party configuration utility.)

It's actually not that hard. When I was first being mentored,
someone showed me three things:

- How to turn an .mc file into a sendmail.cf on the command line.

- The list of things that could go into a .mc file - the cf/README.

- The two gotchas of .mc editing: what 'dnl' did, and making sure
  that each tick has a backtick. (Admittedly, this is a pain, and
  almost an argument for Postfix anyway) :)

The rest really isn't that hard. Believe me, the only editing of
.cf files I've done was quick-and-dirty on weird, one-off boxes that
were set up pre-1997. As soon as the quick-and-dirty was finished,
I would track down the default .cf file for that version of sendmail,
diff it against the current one, figure out what .mc lines
corresponded to it, and then generate the .mc file that should have
been there in the first place. A little time-consuming the first
time, but not hard. And much easier to maintain going forward.

This is not to say that I think that moving to Postfix is bad. (It
was designed for security from day one -- unlike sendmail, which was
grown organically for a long time as the first big kid on the block.
And now that milter support is coming for Postfix, my last big need
only filled by sendmail will be there, so I'll probably switch.) It's
just that I just don't see .cf as an argument for switching. It's
like saying "I don't like C because it generates .o files, and I
can't read those." :)

Simple config = good config, though, so I can definitely see how
Postfix's configs are much easier to read and maintain than even
the .mc file.

Royce

-- 
Royce D. Williams                                - IP Engineering, ACS
personal: [first]@alaska.net                  - PGP: 3FC087DB/1776A531
work: [first.last]@acsalaska.net         - http://www.tycho.org/royce/
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