[KLUG Members] exim? postfix? why not?

[Adam Williams]

>>>While I happen to run sendmail as a mail server here. I would like to
>>>say some good words about qmail. Everyone who I've ever talked to who
>>>has run it has nothing but good things to say about it.
>>My impression is that the light of qmail is fading, I haven't seen any
>>announcements, etc... in awhile.
>It's hard to say if that is qmail development, or if the mailer wars
>have quieted down a bit.

True. They may be pretty much over.  And they probably all have a
sufficient user base to survive into the foreseeable future;  at least
until we are all forced to switch to Exchange XP by the Dept. of
Homeland Security. :)
 
>>If I were to investigate an alternative at this point it would
>>probably be Exim.  Just about every list I'm on has someone who swears
>>by it.  But it has problems (currently, said to be fixed in next
>>release) working optimally with Cyrus IMAPd.  It requires some little
>>shim between it and LMTP.
>Well... yes and no. Exim has several transports, including smtp (which
>is SMTP, duh, over a socket), appendfile, suitable for mboxes, pipe,
>suitable for procmail, and lmtp, which is LMTP over a pipe. I've been
>using the latter, using the program socket(1), to go from Exim to Cyrus
>lmtpd, which listens on localhost. However, more careful perusal of the
>docs shows that you can tell the smtp transport to 'speak' LMTP over a
>socket. I just found this out but haven't changed Exim yet (which is
>version 3.3). So neither cyrdeliver nor socket are apparently necessary.

Right, but that illustrates the primary problem I found with other
MDAs.   If one thinks the docu for sendmail is bad (and I do), the docu
for the others is, in a word, horrible.  

Someone would need to do for them what I am *attempting* to do for
OpenLDAP;  collect all the scattered drippings and crumbs into something
vaguely resembling a cohesive document.

>IIRC, sendmail's milter filters in 'realtime,' while sendmail is getting
>the message, which allows you to issue an SMTP permanent error to the
>mailing host in that session. If true, and if usable, then Exim lacks
>this ability to bounce mail by almost any conceivable ruleset, as the
>filter language doesn't kick in until after mail has been accepted.

That would be a HUGE draw back, IMHO.  Looking at our mail stats, not
performing the error in session would result in a significant increase
in our mail volume.

I'd be surprised if Exim/Qmail/et al. didn't really support milters
however.  I assume it is `just' a matter of assembling a HOWTO;
requiring about 12 hours with Google, a crystal ball, and psychological
profiles of the lead developers.