I am in the process of choosing between postfix and qmail for our mail relays. I've not decided yet. However, I am surprised by the fact that many people who prefer postfix, also enjoy posting unqualified[0] statements[1][2][3] about qmail.
If anyone have properly grounded views, please share!
<rant> Qmail does _everything_ like DJB thinks is the right way: - The FHS doesn't exist - /sbin/init and inetd suck, because they're based on 30 year old design - .... </rant>
The biggest problem with qmail is it's license, as it permits to release a secure _and_ feature-rich binary distribution. This may be no big reason for one or two people managing one or two servers, but in an ISP environment I (and many other) prefer to save time by using "apt-get install".
Another problem is: qmail (at least in standard configuration) is an I/O hog. At one client it was unable to saturate a T1 from a celeron 433 machine with a cheap IDE drive. Postfix in standard configuration outperformed it by factor 5 (and maybe more, since the T1 was saturated then).
I was pretty confused about the number of config files. Yes, even Postfix has some, but there's not one config file for each subsystem. (That argument applies to Sam Varchawik's software [Courier MTA/-IMAP] as well).
[...]See _my_ #2. Qmail _may_ scale well, but it *doesn't* in standard configuration. Did I mention that nobody with a clean mind runs critical and I/O intensive tasks on such hardware?
[1] Michael Loftis wrote (about qmail):
First is, unless they've made design changes, it's trivial to DoS.
Really? How would you DoS qmail? Could the same attack be used to DoS postfix?
[2] Michael Loftis also wrote (about qmail):
Second, it doesn't scale so well, but unless you're talking upwards of about 3-5k/msgs/hr you might not run into it.
Really? Quoting Bernstein quoting Bill Weinman (cr.yp.to/qmail/users.html): "Our busiest list is about 250 messages X 1800 subscribers (avg mail deliveries: 450,000 transactions per day). Sendmail was barfing badly on this, and qmail seems to be doing real well. The machine is a Pentium 90 running Linux 2.0.13 with 64Mb of RAM. I have the spawn limit set at 100. I am *very* impressed."
How was the qmail that didn't scale well configured? On what hardware?
[3] Craig Sanders wrote:I agree. Both statements.
ps: qmail is a bad idea. postfix is better.
Your conclusion may be right, but the arguments are missing. Would you please share?
Thomas
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