Re: E-mail Server

["Adam T. Bowen" <adamb@agitate.org.uk>]

Glynn Clements wrote:
> Cloves Pereira Costa Jr wrote:
>> I want to know your opinion in witch e-mail server is "better": Sendmail
>> or Postfix?
> 
> I don't have any opinion on which one is better, as I've only ever
> used sendmail (when I had to make this choice, it was sendmail versus
> smail).
> 
> Whichever option you choose, spend time learning the software before
> putting it into production use.

I agree with Glynn.  You should give both of these mail servers a try, 
and make a decision based on which one fulfils your requirements. 
Chances are both will, but in my experience, Sendmail is by far the most 
flexible, but at the same time it is one of the hardest to configure 
(although m4 config files have alleviated that to some degree).

> You can get onto an anti-spam blacklist (or even
> several of them) in minutes; getting off usually takes a lot longer.

Make sure you use the tools that are available for testing your mail 
server.  Relay checkers are available as both web based:

   http://www.abuse.net/relay.html

and telnet based:

   telnet rt.njabl.org 2500

If these report any problems, you should stop running the mail server 
immediately, fix the problem and then re-test.  As Glynn said, some 
blocklists are very hard to get off.  I have spent hours on the phone to 
AOL in the past (and this wasn't even because we were being used to 
spam, it was because of ill educated AOL web mail users, who we forward 
mail for from their web site, using the "This is spam" button as a way 
to delete mail), and I can still hear the loop of "Surfin' USA" in my 
mind [shudder].

Adam