ral Posted December 28, 2002 Report Share Posted December 28, 2002 Which is the better mail transport agent ot use - Sendmail or postfix? Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted December 29, 2002 Report Share Posted December 29, 2002 What are your needs? I ask because it will help others answer your question, and also to say that if all you need is is a simple, small, smtp mail-tranfer forwarder check out sSMTP. I use it with Mutt-1.4i, because it's not a daemon, it's extremely small (28KB), and very easy to config. Works for me :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ral Posted December 29, 2002 Author Report Share Posted December 29, 2002 Nothing really, I was just poking around Linux and realized I had two options. Not really sure which one is better. Used both and they both seem to work fine. But anyway, my use is mainly as a personal desktop, and I only use ot it to check a single account. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted December 29, 2002 Report Share Posted December 29, 2002 I don't think better is the question then. They both work and I can't remember if it's postfix or qmail that was built from sendmail. Ease of config and security would be the question, and security issues they all have (daemons that is). I've heard there's a non-daemon script-version of postfix. But why even use that if you don't need anything special. ssmpt is a simple, and easy solution. There're are others that aren't daemons as well. Just my opinion though. I hate to start unecessary crap at boot, and have unecessary security issues that are easily resolved. http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/sear...ubmit=Search+... http://www.han.de/~racke/pard/mail.html http://untroubled.org/nullmailer/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ral Posted December 29, 2002 Author Report Share Posted December 29, 2002 Sorry, edited my message while you were posting your reply. Yes, that sounds very reasonable. I guess I use them becasue they are they default choices in my distro...but I think I will try to get ssmpt. Did some reading. I understand one difference is that Sendmail runs as root, while postfix does not have to. Not sure if this is correct though/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted December 29, 2002 Report Share Posted December 29, 2002 Off the top of my head, I've heard that sendmail is difficult to configure vs postfix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aru Posted December 29, 2002 Report Share Posted December 29, 2002 When I had to take that decision I found out that postfix was better than sendmail (but I don't remember why and I don't know which is the actual situation) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lefthook Posted December 29, 2002 Report Share Posted December 29, 2002 Install Qmail! Easy & more secure than p or s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoonChild Posted December 29, 2002 Report Share Posted December 29, 2002 sendmail is quite easy to use though. And douzens of scripts, web site manager and content management systems prefer it than anything else. Postfix is really hard to work with these scripts and/or programs. Consider that too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crashdamage Posted December 30, 2002 Report Share Posted December 30, 2002 Sendmail and postfix both have security problems. I'm sure a Google search will turn up examples. If that really bothers you, use qmail or ssmtp. qmail is based on sendmail, but kinda more advanced and better security. Both are easy, easier than postfix. ssmtp I haven;t messed with, but I know bvc's right, it's very small and simple and does not run except when you use it. That would make it inherently more secure, except that it apparently has really no security while in operation. From everything I've read, I should use qmail, but I use sendamil 'cause it was easy and ...uhhh...there, and I'm lazy. I take security pretty seriously. I'm firewalled with Bastille, IP mask, NAT and portsentry behind 2 nic cards. Nobody's gettin' in my machine unless they work at it. But I'm just not worried about sendmail's relativly minor security issues...it's still real low risk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest southernguy Posted January 7, 2003 Report Share Posted January 7, 2003 Nothing really, I was just poking around Linux and realized I had two options. Not really sure which one is better. Used both and they both seem to work fine. But anyway, my use is mainly as a personal desktop, and I only use ot it to check a single account. if thats all you're doing you don't need either of them, you don't really need a MTA at all (mail transport agent). all you need is a client, like Kmail or Evolution for graphical or mutt/pine/elm for console. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ral Posted January 7, 2003 Author Report Share Posted January 7, 2003 Okay, so if I understood you correctly (I use Mozilla's Messenger), I don't really need either sendmail or postfix to send and receive emails. Is it better if I just turned both of the off? Tips on how to do that would be appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest southernguy Posted January 7, 2003 Report Share Posted January 7, 2003 Mandrake Control Center (the heavy-duty one that asks for the root password to run it unless you are already logged in as root): Click on the System icon then on the Services icon in that section and you will see sendmail and/or postfix listed, there is a tickbox for each service that turns on and off whether to run it at boot. After you turn them off and have ran your system for a while thru a few reboots etc, and are satisfied that you really don't need them, you can go into your package management software and uninstall the sendmail and postfix packages. Those are mail transport agents which are only needed if you are running a mail server yourself that other users log into to get mail or a relay that gets mail from one server and sends it to another server. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ral Posted January 7, 2003 Author Report Share Posted January 7, 2003 Thanks. Postfix and sendmail disabled. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted January 8, 2003 Report Share Posted January 8, 2003 "... all you need is a client, like Kmail or Evolution for graphical or mutt/pine/elm for console..." How do you setup mutt to use SMTP and POP servers? Also, I found that some applications can't send messages to root if postfix/sendmail is disabled. V. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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