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Article #50

Re: our mail is bouncing

#50
From: Tyler Yip - UnixWeenie(tm)
Date: Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00
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In article <76hbf3$p4e$1@hubble.csuchico.edu>,
Pythagoras Watson <py@ecst.csuchico.edu> wrote:
>According to Tyler Yip - UnixWeenie(tm) <davros@ecst.csuchico.edu>:
>:gangrene and anthrax are bouncing our mail for spam violation and/or
>:unknown local user.
>
>Sorry about that.  We changed the name of spam to something more in line
>with the machine room disease naming scheme.  Unfortunately, that broke
>NFS, so qmail ending up thinking the users did not exist.
>
>:Would someone please install sendmail.
>
>Not that anything is likely to change in the near future, but I would be
>curious about reasons as to why qmail should be replaced with sendmail.
>What exactly do you miss about sendmail?
>

LISA'98 had a debate session, "Mailer Wars" in which some guy who was
a proponent of Qmail, primarily based upon two premises - security and
speed, repeatedly flamed Sendmail.  Each time he mentioned security,
Wietse Venema, who was there as a proponent for PostFix (aka Vmailer),
would laugh and point and generally heckle him.  Sure Qmail has
a reputation for being secure.  Sendmail's still a good mailer.

As for the argument for speed, Eric Allman made a strong point.  Qmail
produces speed for sending mail (optimal for mailing list servers, which
isn't an issue at Chico) by conducting multiple asynchronous streams
of outbound traffic to any given site based solely upon the local
conditions such as the queue age and load.  There is no consideration
given to the conditions on the remote site.  This also induces a danger
that Qmail will deliver a given message more than once since there may
be multiple Qmail sessions processing the queue independent of eachother
at a given time.  The Qmail proponent gave some ballpark figure of a
given site's mailing list server performance as millions of messages
per hour.  Being able to shove several million messages per hour down
anyone else's throat isn't a good reason to choose a mailer, and properly
tuned, Sendmail can handle transfer rates like that in a more robust manner.
Sendmail also doesn't require multiple separate independent long running
daemons to process your queue.

Personal peeves:
	Qmail, or at least the installation here, doesn't put our real
		names in our mail.  more and more people think my name
		is dave.
	Qmail, or at least the installation here, doesn't understand
		timestamps.  All our mail goes out GMT, and it's not
		consistant.  Initiating host's Qmail puts in a -0000
		offset, but the Qmail handling the initial Received
		header puts in a -0800 offset, and for locally delivered
		mail it delivers with a -0000 offset, resulting in our
		new mail being mailformed.  It's to the point that I have
		to look at procmail logs in order to find out when my
		mail actually arrived.
-- 
Tyler Yip            : @Home Network        : http://www.home.net
System Administrator : 425 Broadway         :
tyler@corp.home.net  : Redwood City, Calif. : @Home - Unreasonably Fast
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Message-ID: <76hei6$p6v$1@hubble.csuchico.edu>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!unknown!not-for-mail
References: <76fct9$lff$1@hubble.csuchico.edu> <76hbf3$p4e$1@hubble.csuchico.edu>

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From: davros@ecst.csuchico.edu (Tyler Yip - UnixWeenie(tm))
Subject: Re: our mail is bouncing
Date: 1999/01/01
Message-ID: <76hei6$p6v$1@hubble.csuchico.edu>
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Distribution: ecst
References: <76fct9$lff$1@hubble.csuchico.edu> <76hbf3$p4e$1@hubble.csuchico.edu>
Organization: California State University, Chico
Newsgroups: chico.ect.help