Acknowledgments

No book is the product of one person. This one certainly is not! I have many people to thank for their help in producing the book.

The idea for this book came originally from Tim O'Reilly. Mike Loukides explained the idea of the book to me, and I knew I wanted to write it. Tim and Mike deserve thanks for getting the ball rolling.

Two editors have supported me through the long and difficult process of producing this book. Jim Sumser worked with me during the first phase of writing and Simon St.Laurent brought me through to the finish line. Both of these guys have been a great help.

I particularly want to thank my technical reviewers, Greg Shapiro, Claus Assmann, and Nick Christenson. You could not ask for a better technical team. Look at the list of authors for the Sendmail Installation and Operations Guide and you'll see Greg and Claus listed there. You'll also see Greg's name on most of the sample configurations provided with the sendmail distribution ”no one knows more about sendmail configuration than Greg. As for Nick, he is the author of the book sendmail Performance Tuning (Addison Wesley) that Eric Allman simply calls "great." These guys know sendmail and they took the time to meticulously review every page of this book. Their help and insight were invaluable. This is a much better book because of their involvement.

I also want to thank the crew at O'Reilly. Thanks to Marlowe Shaeffer, production editor and proofreader, for getting this book through; Derek Di Matteo for copyediting; Ellie Volckhausen for her work on the cover; and Tom Dinse for the indexing.

Finally, I want to thank my family for having the patience to put up with me when I have no patience left.