Was reading the long list of things being deprecated in the RHEL 8 release notes t'other day, and saw my old friend sendmail on the list.
I've stuck by her because I've learned how she likes to be stroked to get the best out of her, and quail at the thought of taking on a new MTA and having to learn it all all over again.
But I guess I'm going to have to, soon or late, probably sooner than later. :(
Can anyone point me to resources specifically for helping us ignorant folk in converting all the arcan-ity in sendmail.mc into something equivalent for Postfix?
Thanks in advancce!
Fred
On 20/09/2019 9:04 am, Fred Smith wrote:
Was reading the long list of things being deprecated in the RHEL 8 release notes t'other day, and saw my old friend sendmail on the list.
I've stuck by her because I've learned how she likes to be stroked to get the best out of her, and quail at the thought of taking on a new MTA and having to learn it all all over again.
But I guess I'm going to have to, soon or late, probably sooner than later. :(
Can anyone point me to resources specifically for helping us ignorant folk in converting all the arcan-ity in sendmail.mc into something equivalent for Postfix?
Thanks in advancce!
Fred
Hi Fred I've been through the same process when I switched to SL7, its not too hard. I used the O'Reilly book on Postfix as my guide, although your signature says a whole lot more ;-)
---- Fred Smith -- fredex@fcshome.stoneham.ma.us ----------------------------- I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. ------------------------------ Philippians 4:13 -------------------------------
When I migrated our mx boxes from CentOS 5 to 7 I made the leap to postfix.
I built a test server with postfix etc on it and threw everything I could think of at it before going live.
The key is, like in learning a new language, to start thinking in postfix terms instead of thinking in sendmail terms.
It takes a while to 'get it' but I'm glad we made the link.
We search, read as many people's howtos as you can (caveat - they are rarely 100% accurate), and test, test, test before going into production.
Cheers,
Phil
-- Phil Randal Infrastructure Engineer Hoople Ltd | Plough Lane | Hereford HR4 0LE Tel: 01432 260415 | Website: www.hoopleltd.co.uk Follow us on: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
-----Original Message----- From: CentOS centos-bounces@centos.org On Behalf Of Fred Smith Sent: 20 September 2019 00:04 To: centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] deprecations leading up to C8
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organisation. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe.
Was reading the long list of things being deprecated in the RHEL 8 release notes t'other day, and saw my old friend sendmail on the list.
I've stuck by her because I've learned how she likes to be stroked to get the best out of her, and quail at the thought of taking on a new MTA and having to learn it all all over again.
But I guess I'm going to have to, soon or late, probably sooner than later. :(
Can anyone point me to resources specifically for helping us ignorant folk in converting all the arcan-ity in sendmail.mc into something equivalent for Postfix?
Thanks in advancce!
Fred -- ---- Fred Smith -- fredex@fcshome.stoneham.ma.us ----------------------------- I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. ------------------------------ Philippians 4:13 ------------------------------- _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos Hoople Ltd, Registered in England and Wales No. 7556595 Registered office: Plough Lane, Hereford, HR4 0LE
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Am 2019-09-20 12:06, schrieb Randal, Phil:
When I migrated our mx boxes from CentOS 5 to 7 I made the leap to postfix.
I built a test server with postfix etc on it and threw everything I could think of at it before going live.
The key is, like in learning a new language, to start thinking in postfix terms instead of thinking in sendmail terms.
Exactly, I was about to answer the same.
Postfix has a lot of features build-in Sendmail hasn't. It is feature rich and actively developed. Many things you would need a milter or complex cf style coding for with Sendmail you can configure in Postfix in a simple way.
It takes a while to 'get it' but I'm glad we made the link.
We search, read as many people's howtos as you can (caveat - they are rarely 100% accurate), and test, test, test before going into production.
Please, forget about so call howtos or tutorials on the net. They are either dated, giving wrong ideas (no, you don't need a MySQL server to run Postfix), failing to explain why the author has done things the way he writes them up, or they are simply wrong / violating best practice.
Postfix has a very good documentation (compared to the one shipping with Sendmail).
http://www.postfix.org/documentation.html
http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html
Cheers,
Phil
Alexander
--On Friday, September 20, 2019 3:49 PM +0200 Alexander Dalloz ad+lists@uni-x.org wrote:
Postfix has a lot of features build-in Sendmail hasn't. It is feature rich and actively developed. Many things you would need a milter or complex cf style coding for with Sendmail you can configure in Postfix in a simple way.
How would you implement the section here titled "Sendmail workaround" using Postfix? I use a lot of plussed addresses with the plus replaced with dot to deal with broken websites that reject a plus sign in an address. All my website logins use plussed addresses with dots. (I also use an email alias so my email address isn't my imap login.)
Once upon a time, Kenneth Porter shiva@sewingwitch.com said:
How would you implement the section here titled "Sendmail workaround" using Postfix?
http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#recipient_delimiter
--On Friday, September 20, 2019 2:06 PM -0500 Chris Adams linux@cmadams.net wrote:
How would you implement the section here titled "Sendmail workaround" using Postfix?
Perfect. I think the only other significant customizations I have are lines to use the MIMEDefang and OpenDKIM milters. When last I looked into migrating, I recall that Postfix handled milters just fine.
Meanwhile, I'd considered replacing procmail with the Dovecot delivery program to get access to Sieve filtering but didn't see how to easily invoke SpamAssassin as I do now in /etc/procmailrc. Is Procmail still the default delivery agent in RHEL8?
Once upon a time, Kenneth Porter shiva@sewingwitch.com said:
Perfect. I think the only other significant customizations I have are lines to use the MIMEDefang and OpenDKIM milters. When last I looked into migrating, I recall that Postfix handled milters just fine.
Milters work a little different under postfix IIRC... I haven't tried them (which is a little sad, since I think I may have been the first person to write a sendmail milter :) ).
Meanwhile, I'd considered replacing procmail with the Dovecot delivery program to get access to Sieve filtering but didn't see how to easily invoke SpamAssassin as I do now in /etc/procmailrc. Is Procmail still the default delivery agent in RHEL8?
Postfix can use lmtp or procmail (I don't remember which is default). IIRC sieve may not provide external scripting for security reasons.
I use spamassassin via amavisd-new, with messages going postfix -> amavisd -> second postfix (all via SMTP). It's more complicated, and not really necessary for the small setup (but I run larger mail servers with that setup, so I do the same for my personal servers as well).
On 21/09/19 9:07 AM, Chris Adams wrote:
Once upon a time, Kenneth Porter shiva@sewingwitch.com said:
Perfect. I think the only other significant customizations I have are lines to use the MIMEDefang and OpenDKIM milters. When last I looked into migrating, I recall that Postfix handled milters just fine.
Milters work a little different under postfix IIRC... I haven't tried them (which is a little sad, since I think I may have been the first person to write a sendmail milter :) ).
Postfix has excellent milter support, it may not work exactly the same as they do in sendmail but they are designed to be fully compatible with sendmail milters. Also I believe that nowadays milters are written just as much to be support postfix as sendmail, if not moreso:
http://www.postfix.org/MILTER_README.html
Meanwhile, I'd considered replacing procmail with the Dovecot delivery program to get access to Sieve filtering but didn't see how to easily invoke SpamAssassin as I do now in /etc/procmailrc. Is Procmail still the default delivery agent in RHEL8?
I would recommend dovecot lmtp over dovecot lda.
Postfix can use dovecot lmtp or procmail (I don't remember which is default).
Postfix can use just about any delivery agent. The default in postfix is to use its own local(8) and virtual(8) delivery agents. That said, these delivery agents are very limited in comparison to dovecot lmtp or procmail.
IIRC sieve may not provide external scripting for security reasons.
I'm pretty sure it does via managesieve.
I use spamassassin via amavisd-new, with messages going postfix -> amavisd -> second postfix (all via SMTP).
This is a good setup, but you may find that you can eliminate the second postfix step there and go postfix -> amavisd-new -> dovecot lmtp. Unless you need additional processing specifically from postfix after amavisd-new, that is.
Peter
exim should also be considered. We have been using exim with CentOS for at least 10 years.
Todd Merriman
On Saturday, September 21, 2019 3:14:12 PM CEST MAILIST wrote:
exim should also be considered. We have been using exim with CentOS for at least 10 years.
Right. I've been using exim for over 20 years and haven't had any issues with it. Exims documentation is outstanding and the mailing list is great.
For IMAP, you want cyrus.
--On Saturday, September 21, 2019 9:59 PM +1200 Peter peter@pajamian.dhs.org wrote:
I use spamassassin via amavisd-new, with messages going postfix -> amavisd -> second postfix (all via SMTP).
This is a good setup, but you may find that you can eliminate the second postfix step there and go postfix -> amavisd-new -> dovecot lmtp. Unless you need additional processing specifically from postfix after amavisd-new, that is.
I've been doing sendmail -> MIMEDefang -> SpamAssassin/clamd and then sendmail -> procmail -> SpamAssassin. Yeah, SA gets run twice, once to reject scores > 10 by the milter and then again by each user to incorporate their Bayes scores. I'd love to run it only once but haven't invested time in figuring out how to do that. But I only have a few users so it hasn't been a big enough load to worry about it.
I'm the only one in my family/office doing extensive procmail filtering for my own mail, as I subscribe to lots of lists and like pre-filtering it all into separate folders. (I probably have 100-200 folders, so my MUA gets a workout looking for new mail.) I'd replace the procmail filters with sieve ones using Dovecot but I still want SpamAssassin to run first to mark the spam for filtering.
(BTW, pet peeve about Thunderbird MUA: It fails to spot new folders I create when I add a new procmail filter. I have to go into Thunderbird's subscription dialog and force it to reload the folder list. I use an old copy of Mulberry in parallel and it always dependably reloads the folder list on startup.)
On Sat, 21 Sep 2019, Kenneth Porter wrote:
I've been doing sendmail -> MIMEDefang -> SpamAssassin/clamd and then sendmail -> procmail -> SpamAssassin. Yeah, SA gets run twice, once to reject scores > 10 by the milter and then again by each user to incorporate their Bayes scores. I'd love to run it only once but haven't invested time in figuring out how to do that. But I only have a few users so it hasn't been a big enough load to worry about it.
Have you considered running the SpamAssassin Milter?
https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/spamass-milt/
It's available via EPEL. You can reject high-scoring spam during the SMTP transactions. It also allows per-user preferences/Bayes rules to run, with the caveat that a message addressed to multiple users can't take advantage of the per-user run. (Unlike a setup using mimedefang, spamass-milter can't resubmit a message for each addressee.)
--On Monday, September 23, 2019 9:14 AM -0700 Paul Heinlein heinlein@madboa.com wrote:
You can reject high-scoring spam during the SMTP transactions. It also allows per-user preferences/Bayes rules to run, with the caveat that a message addressed to multiple users can't take advantage of the per-user run. (Unlike a setup using mimedefang, spamass-milter can't resubmit a message for each addressee.)
MIMEDefang lets me also run ClamAV and I can add more complicated rules. For example, I quarantine dangerous extensions for the click-happy users while allowing them through for those who know how to manually check them.
On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 02:49:36PM +0200, Alexander Dalloz wrote:
Am 2019-09-20 12:06, schrieb Randal, Phil:
When I migrated our mx boxes from CentOS 5 to 7 I made the leap to postfix.
I built a test server with postfix etc on it and threw everything I could think of at it before going live.
The key is, like in learning a new language, to start thinking in postfix terms instead of thinking in sendmail terms.
Exactly, I was about to answer the same.
Postfix has a lot of features build-in Sendmail hasn't. It is feature rich and actively developed. Many things you would need a milter or complex cf style coding for with Sendmail you can configure in Postfix in a simple way.
It takes a while to 'get it' but I'm glad we made the link.
We search, read as many people's howtos as you can (caveat - they are rarely 100% accurate), and test, test, test before going into production.
Please, forget about so call howtos or tutorials on the net. They are either dated, giving wrong ideas (no, you don't need a MySQL server to run Postfix), failing to explain why the author has done things the way he writes them up, or they are simply wrong / violating best practice.
Postfix has a very good documentation (compared to the one shipping with Sendmail).
http://www.postfix.org/documentation.html
http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html
Cheers,
Phil
Alexander
Thanks to both of you: I'll be pursuing those docs.
Fred
Le 20/09/2019 à 14:49, Alexander Dalloz a écrit :
Please, forget about so call howtos or tutorials on the net. They are either dated, giving wrong ideas (no, you don't need a MySQL server to run Postfix), failing to explain why the author has done things the way he writes them up, or they are simply wrong / violating best practice.
Here are my so-called tutorials about Postfix with plenty of wrong information, failing to explain everything:
https://www.microlinux.fr/tag/postfix/
Enjoy :o)
Cheers,
Niki
On Sun, Sep 22, 2019 at 09:34:59PM +0200, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
Le 20/09/2019 à 14:49, Alexander Dalloz a écrit :
Please, forget about so call howtos or tutorials on the net. They are either dated, giving wrong ideas (no, you don't need a MySQL server to run Postfix), failing to explain why the author has done things the way he writes them up, or they are simply wrong / violating best practice.
Here are my so-called tutorials about Postfix with plenty of wrong information, failing to explain everything:
https://www.microlinux.fr/tag/postfix/
Enjoy :o)
Cheers,
Niki
Thanks Niki! Google even does a pretty good job of translating them for those of us who are Francophonally challended.
I find it humorous that it talks about "throwing" an application. :) I guess the original was something like "launching", only in French.
Hello Fred,
On Sun, 22 Sep 2019 17:47:00 -0400 Fred Smith fredex@fcshome.stoneham.ma.us wrote:
On Sun, Sep 22, 2019 at 09:34:59PM +0200, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
Le 20/09/2019 à 14:49, Alexander Dalloz a écrit :
Please, forget about so call howtos or tutorials on the net. They are either dated, giving wrong ideas (no, you don't need a MySQL server to run Postfix), failing to explain why the author has done things the way he writes them up, or they are simply wrong / violating best practice.
Here are my so-called tutorials about Postfix with plenty of wrong information, failing to explain everything:
https://www.microlinux.fr/tag/postfix/
Enjoy :o)
Cheers,
Niki
Thanks Niki! Google even does a pretty good job of translating them for those of us who are Francophonally challended.
I find it humorous that it talks about "throwing" an application. :) I guess the original was something like "launching", only in French.
Yes funny, this poor translation comes from the fact that the verb "lancer" in French has several meanings, throw and launch (as well as initiate, start, in a more familiar way). A rocket will be launched, a ball with be thrown, a process will start, an application will be launched. They both translate to French with the verb "lancer" ("start" should be "démarrer", "lancer" is not the formal use for this even if very common). Google just does it wrong in the other way ;-) (as usual, and it's not the worst at it).
Regards,
Le 22/09/2019 à 23:47, Fred Smith a écrit :
Thanks Niki! Google even does a pretty good job of translating them for those of us who are Francophonally challended.
I find it humorous that it talks about "throwing" an application. :) I guess the original was something like "launching", only in French.
On a related off-topic note, here's a funny anecdote. Back in the mid-nineties, I worked as a translator for a french company that worked for IBM. We did all the work for their brand-new project, but things were kept secret, so we had to use a dummy project name, and the real name was only to be revealed very shortly before the release.
Some time before the release, IBM revealed the project name "Pine" for their new multimedia PC. And we had a problem. Because the advertisement folders had now titles like "Découvrez les joies du multimédia avec votre Pine". In France, "pine" is the slang word for "penis".
After a few funny phone calls, the project was eventually renamed, and some of you may remember the IBM Aptiva running Windows 95.
:o)
Cheers,
Niki
Hey Niki,
On Mon, 23 Sep 2019 10:53:21 +0200 Nicolas Kovacs info@microlinux.fr wrote:
Le 22/09/2019 à 23:47, Fred Smith a écrit :
Thanks Niki! Google even does a pretty good job of translating them for those of us who are Francophonally challended.
I find it humorous that it talks about "throwing" an application. :) I guess the original was something like "launching", only in French.
On a related off-topic note, here's a funny anecdote. Back in the mid-nineties, I worked as a translator for a french company that worked for IBM. We did all the work for their brand-new project, but things were kept secret, so we had to use a dummy project name, and the real name was only to be revealed very shortly before the release.
Some time before the release, IBM revealed the project name "Pine" for their new multimedia PC. And we had a problem. Because the advertisement folders had now titles like "Découvrez les joies du multimédia avec votre Pine". In France, "pine" is the slang word for "penis".
After a few funny phone calls, the project was eventually renamed, and some of you may remember the IBM Aptiva running Windows 95.
lol, croustillant. Still on this way, the Pine Store exists ;-) (and the Pine community or the Pine Microsystems too), fortunately not translated to French, even "pin" (pine tree in French) doesn't make it.
Regards,
Does that mean it's gone from the CentOS repos or just that PostFix is the default choice?
On 9/19/19 6:04 PM, Fred Smith wrote:
Was reading the long list of things being deprecated in the RHEL 8 release notes t'other day, and saw my old friend sendmail on the list.
I've stuck by her because I've learned how she likes to be stroked to get the best out of her, and quail at the thought of taking on a new MTA and having to learn it all all over again.
But I guess I'm going to have to, soon or late, probably sooner than later. :(
Can anyone point me to resources specifically for helping us ignorant folk in converting all the arcan-ity in sendmail.mc into something equivalent for Postfix?
Thanks in advancce!
Fred
On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 12:45:03PM -0500, SternData wrote:
Does that mean it's gone from the CentOS repos or just that PostFix is the default choice?
I believe it means that it won't be in Centos anymore.
I also believe the Postifx is already the default choice, Sendmail isn't in the default installation.
On 9/19/19 6:04 PM, Fred Smith wrote:
Was reading the long list of things being deprecated in the RHEL 8 release notes t'other day, and saw my old friend sendmail on the list.
I've stuck by her because I've learned how she likes to be stroked to get the best out of her, and quail at the thought of taking on a new MTA and having to learn it all all over again.
But I guess I'm going to have to, soon or late, probably sooner than later. :(
Can anyone point me to resources specifically for helping us ignorant folk in converting all the arcan-ity in sendmail.mc into something equivalent for Postfix?
Thanks in advancce!
Fred
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 21/09/19 1:25 PM, Fred Smith wrote:
On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 12:45:03PM -0500, SternData wrote:
Does that mean it's gone from the CentOS repos or just that PostFix is the default choice?
I believe it means that it won't be in Centos anymore.
Correct, but do note that epel has picked up where Red Hat has dropped the ball. Sendmail is available for el8 from epel.
That said, there is nothing wrong with switching to postfix if that's what you want, postfix is an excellent MTA. It's just that if you want to continue with sendmail then epel provides a solution for you.
Peter
On 21/09/19 10:15 PM, Peter wrote:
On 21/09/19 1:25 PM, Fred Smith wrote:
On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 12:45:03PM -0500, SternData wrote:
Does that mean it's gone from the CentOS repos or just that PostFix is the default choice?
I believe it means that it won't be in Centos anymore.
Correct, but do note that epel has picked up where Red Hat has dropped the ball. Sendmail is available for el8 from epel.
Sorry, I am mistaken. I looked at the epel package list and saw "sendemail" and mistook it for "sendmail".
I imagine that someone will end up building sendmail for el8, though.
Peter
On 21/09/2019 11:18, Peter wrote:
On 21/09/19 10:15 PM, Peter wrote:
On 21/09/19 1:25 PM, Fred Smith wrote:
On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 12:45:03PM -0500, SternData wrote:
Does that mean it's gone from the CentOS repos or just that PostFix is the default choice?
I believe it means that it won't be in Centos anymore.
Correct, but do note that epel has picked up where Red Hat has dropped the ball. Sendmail is available for el8 from epel.
Sorry, I am mistaken. I looked at the epel package list and saw "sendemail" and mistook it for "sendmail".
I imagine that someone will end up building sendmail for el8, though.
Sendmail is still in RHEL8, so it will be in CentOS too (I assume).
sendmail-8.15.2-31.el8.x86_64 is in the appstream repo.
Phil
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wwp