[CentOS] Kind of OT: internal imap server

Thu Aug 24 07:03:39 UTC 2006
Feizhou <feizhou at graffiti.net>

> sendmail - No longer the security nightmare it used to be, but it is
> 	   the slower of the bunch.

are we talking about sendmail X? ;)

> 
> postfix  - The easiest to configure. Has enough features and speed
>            to keep most people happy.

hmm...i don't know...qmail appears to me to be the easiest of them all 
due to its utter simplicity (and lack of features/necessary behavior)

> 
> exim     - Fast and powerful. Lots of features and highly configurable.
>            But ONLY if you know very well what you are going. Not as
> 	   hard as sendmail to configure (think sendmail.cf), but
>            much harder than postfix. Expecially recomended for people
> 	   (like me) that enjoy micromanaging and customizing every
>            small detail. ACL features are a god given.

I must take a look at exim one of these days.

> 
> qmail    - (Take with a grain of salt, since I dislike dbj) A pain.
>            It is fast and secure, as long as you use the stock
>            package. But you will need to include several external
>            packages to get even basic functionality, and everything
>            about it (except SMTP protocol itself) is non standard,
> 	   and the configuration is spread between a lot of files
>            and directories. But it really is fast (slightly faster
>            than exim in some cases, about the same in others).

You could run qmail-smtpd out of xinetd...and run qmail without 
daemontools and log to syslog. But if you are into djb's stuff you do 
end up using the rest of his good stuff.

> 
> As you can see, I use Exim so, again, take another grain of salt.
> My current exim setup is, as far as I know, impossible to reproduce
> with any other MTA, unless you use several external hacks (multiple
> instances with different configurations, with port redirection, to
> name just one).

When you say multiple instances, I assume multiple queues too?

> 
> But most of the time, when recomending a MTA to others, I say
> postfix.
> 

:D - qmail not suitable for today's Internet as an MX mta without 
patching and sendmail a pain to learn/understand if you are not familiar 
with m4