Chapter 10: Postfix

Overview

Postfix is an efficient and feature-rich mail server that was designed by Wietse Venema at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (Figure 10-1). It was intended to be a replacement for the popular Sendmail. While it still represents only a small percentage of mail server installations worldwide, its popularity is growing rapidly, due to its simple configuration, secure implementation, and high performance architecture.

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Figure 10-1: Postfix

Also, because Postfix is designed to behave outwardly like Sendmail, it is a mostly drop-in replacement for the older, larger, and slower mail server. It does lack some of the obscure features of Sendmail, but the features it lacks are rarely used by the vast majority of users, so they are not often missed.

The Postfix project, originally named VMailer (fortunately for everyone, the name was changed before release due to legal entanglements of the VMailer name), is designed as a group of related but separate executable components, providing security through segmentation. Smaller parts are easier to debug, as well. The Internet home of Postfix is www.postfix.org [http://www.postfix.org]. Postfix is an ideal mail server choice for new mail administrators, and even experienced Sendmail administrators might find its simplicity appealing. Because it provides a quite compatible Sendmail-ish exterior, and provides programs of the same names (such as sendmail for sending mail, mailq for managing the queue, etc.), and can utilize the same type of aliases and forwarding files that Sendmail uses, it is possible to replace Sendmail without reconfiguring existing mail-related tools, or rewriting local scripts. After such a switch, local users may not even notice the difference.

Note 

The previous statements should not be viewed as an endorsement of Postfix as being a better mail transport agent than Sendmail. The two projects have different emphasis, and have had very different development models. Sendmail has been in use all over the world for over 20 years in one form or another, and thus has an extremely large head start on Postfix with regard to maturity, available documentation, number of experienced administrators, and support tools. Postfix is only a few years old and has much more limited supporting documentation and tools to enhance it. The decision for which mail transfer agent is appropriate for your network will be dictated by the requirements and the availability of local expertise.



The Book of Webmin... or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love UNIX
The Book of Webmin: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love UNIX
ISBN: 1886411921
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 142
Authors: Joe Cooper

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