sendmail or qmail? which one for a newbie to mail server?

[slimbim]

I am trying to set up an email server in Redhat 8.0. I've been reading around, and it seems that many people like either sendmail or qmail. Which one would you recommend? I've never set up a mail server before.

Also, is there a easy to follow tutorial on how to set up the email server using either one?

thanks a bunch!!!

 

[n0cmonkey]

If you want to start a flame war on most discussion boards, go with qmail vs postfix.

qmail is fine.
sendmail is fine.
postfix is fine.
exim is fine.

Pick one, learn it, and you will either be happy or hate life, but you will probably get mail

My problem with qmail is that I cannot find very many good documents on resource limiting. Sendmail is the standard for mail basically, but its history scares me a bit. Postfix is fine, but a PITA to setup. Exim I do not have much experience with.

 

[Mucman]

hehe, there have been some pretty entertaining flamewars over this subject

I personally use qmail and learned to do it from lifewithqmail

A friend of mine who has used qmail, works on a server running exim and really likes it.

How much mail are you anticipating going through the server?

 

[Gantry]

If you have little experience with setting up an email server and are planning on using RedHat 8.0, sendmail is the obvious choice. RedHat does most of the work for you, as they have a default sendmail install that needs little tweaking. Qmail, on the other hand, isn't distributed with RedHat due to its unique licensing and typically involves compiling and possibly patching. It also uses its own daemons and logging, not to mention a unique file system layout. All in all, sendmail will be much easier to get up and running. That being said, I prefer qmail but start with sendmail and see if it fits your liking...

 

[slimbim]

Thanks guys. I just skimmed through the "Life with Qmail", and it looks like a very nice guide.

I don't expect too much mail, prob 5 users max for right now.

I will take the advise of going with sendmail for right now, and after I setup sendmail successfully, I'll read through "Life with Qmail" and setup Qmail.

Is there anything like "Life with Sendmail" out there?

Thankyou very much.

 

[Kell]

Sendmail is a good SMTP server to get comfortable with, simply for the fact that sendmail is the most ubiquitous *NIX SMTP server, and everything out there works first with sendmail. The one major drawback with Sendmail, though, is that it's one of the slowest SMTP servers around. In common benchmarks, it gets its ass handed to it by most of the other popular mail servers out there.

So in addition to Sendmail, it would be a good idea to learn an alternative MTA. I prefer postfix. qmail is also good; it's about as fast as postfix (the two trade places at the top of benchmark charts). qmail has some minor RFC compliance issues, however; in fact, these issues have affected me, even though I don't even run qmail. Occasionally a qmail server somewhere rejects my mail if I have a "Sender" field with a subaddress.

 

[N11]

Originally posted by: Kell
Sendmail is a good SMTP server to get comfortable with, simply for the fact that sendmail is the most ubiquitous *NIX SMTP server, and everything out there works first with sendmail. The one major drawback with Sendmail, though, is that it's one of the slowest SMTP servers around. In common benchmarks, it gets its ass handed to it by most of the other popular mail servers out there.

So in addition to Sendmail, it would be a good idea to learn an alternative MTA. I prefer postfix. qmail is also good; it's about as fast as postfix (the two trade places at the top of benchmark charts). qmail has some minor RFC compliance issues, however; in fact, these issues have affected me, even though I don't even run qmail. Occasionally a qmail server somewhere rejects my mail if I have a "Sender" field with a subaddress.

There definitely are speed issues to consider when dealing in high per hour volumes.

Sendmail is not really a spammers best choice -- at least this is the data we've seen. Other MTAs that have speed on their side are definitely more popular.

That doesn't, however, keep fraudulent credit card using spammers from doing whatever they and using whatever they can to spam.

 

[slimbim]

ok...with that said....then which one do you think has an easier to follow setup guide? postfix or qmail?

 

[Kell]

I personally think postfix has a better setup guide, plus the config files are more intuitive. Last I knew, qmail depended on D.J. Bernstein's customized service tools, which adds a little bit to the difficulty.