[CentOS] Postfix setup

[Robert Moskowitz]

On 03/11/2013 09:27 AM, James B. Byrne wrote:
> On Mon, March 11, 2013 04:52, Tilman Schmidt wrote:
>> Am 11.03.2013 03:54, schrieb Austin Einter:
>>> I am planning to setup mail server for my domain.
>>>
>>> Which one is preferred postfix or sendmail.
> Postfix.
>
> I have been running Sendmail from version 8.6 in 1995 on HP-UX 9.02 to
> 8.13 at the present on CentOS-5.9 as these were the default MTA's
> shipped by the vendor.  When RHEL-6 switched from Sendmail to Postfix
> I decided to bite the bullet and change my public MX servers to
> Postfix as and when I upgraded them to CentOS-6.  This was not without
> difficulty and unhappiness, for I miss the command line email trace
> facility that Sendmail provides out of the box, but it was not
> traumatic either.
>
> The main benefit to using Postfix over Sendmail is that Postfix
> definitely places a lower intellectual load on its administrators.
> For that reason alone I would recommend it over Sendmail. While M4
> macros take most of the arcana out of Sendmail's configuration files
> they are no where near as easy to understand as Postfix's simple
> config files.

I would further add, don't manually edit your main.cf, learn the 
postconf command.  It is easier to keep track of changes as you make 
them, and put them back to default. Too many of the howtos provide THEIR 
main.cf and you have no easy way of telling what they changed.  
master.cf is harder to maintain; for the most part, you can just append 
what you need to the end, rather then add in place.

> The only 'rule' I have to suggest is:
>
> The mail server host and all of its MX records must resolve to a DNS
> 'A" or 'AAAA' record.  Do not use CNAME records with any MX host or
> you will learn why not to do this the hard way.

No, no.  He has to learn the the hard way like the rest of us did! Or at 
least those that did it before Liu came out with his book...