[CentOS] Postfix vs Sendmail

Sat Nov 2 15:57:03 UTC 2013
Harold Pritchett <harold at uga.edu>

On 11/2/2013 8:57 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> I have two CentOS-6.4 servers, in different places.
> I am running postfix/amavis on one, and sendmail/procmail on the other.
> I don't recall having any difficulty setting up sendmail many years ago
> using sendmail.mc .
> But I found postfix very complicated to setup last year.
> (It's working fine now.)
>
> I recall that when I asked for advice
> one person advised me to read 2 books on postfix,
> and another advised me to pay someone to set it up.
>
> I asked why postfix was preferable, but didn't any convincing reply.
> The general response was along the lines that it was the "modern" way.
>
> Having looked into postfix/amavis a little further,
> it seems to me to involve excessively complicated processes
> (at least for a simple home server)
> with email going along spaghetti-like routes.
>
> Am I alone in this view?

Not at all.  Selection of a mail agent borders on a religious topic.  I personally am a devout sendmail admin.  I have been running sendmail since I was the sysadmin of a network 
of sun4 pizza boxes back in the 1980's.  I even met Eric Allman at a USENIX conference once.  I've have given sessions on installing and configuring sendmail at national and 
international conferences.  I once installed sendmail on an IBM Mainframe running Redhat Linux.

Are there better servers?  Probably.  According to WIkipedia, the only mail servers with more than 10% of the servers on the internet running them are Sendmail, Microsoft Exchange 
Server, Exim and Postfix, but these are hardly the only ones out there.

In CentOS 6, postfix is the default server.  What does that mean? It means that postfix is pre-selected in the anaconda install script.  If you want to run something else, and not 
have to deal with un-installing postfix and installing your own religion then just un-select postfix and select your own when you do the initial install.  You know, check the boxes 
saying you want to edit the packages being installed and make the changes before you do the install.

Let's not get into a religious shouting match here.  You know, the my software is better than yours kind of thing.  Pick what you are comfortable with and run it.  They all do 
basically the same thing, just in different ways.

Harold