Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 22 Jul 2003 01:05:15 +0200 (CEST)
From:      Walter Hop <freebsd@walter.transip.nl>
To:        freebsd-isp@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Ideal mail server: qmail or postfix
Message-ID:  <20030722000726.X21161@blue.calx.nl>
In-Reply-To: <BB422296.66BE%james@organicwire.net>
References:  <BB422296.66BE%james@organicwire.net>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
[in reply to James Godwin <james@organicwire.net>, 21/07/03]

> I was wondering what mail servers fellow ISP are running. I can't
> decide between postfix or qmail.

The last two years, we have used Postfix exclusively, so this message is
biased. :) We made the switch from Sendmail mainly for security reasons,
although qmail has the same strong points. We chose for Postfix because
it seemed to have a better "future".

Postfix configuration is a heaven and still is flexible enough for all
our scenarios; I've heard that some advanced tasks cannot be
accomplished but all our needs were met. Routing, access controls, spam
filtering, virus scanning is flexible enough.

It supports Sendmailish things such as .forward files and procmail out
of the box; there are separate tools for qmail to do this. A chroot
setup is easy. IPv6 support works out of the box with the FreeBSD port.

>From a system administrator's perspective, Postfix' management tools for
troubleshooting and maintaining its databases are clear and complete,
and the log and error messages are very clear. Upgrading via portupgrade
has never broken our setup, even across major versions.

We use the FreeBSD port in combination with amavisd and SpamAssassin
(setup of these ports is a no-brainer and their performance is good!)
We just keep mail for regular useraccounts in /var/mail. If you have
large numbers of users, a more exotic setup may be interesting; I don't
know which one of the two is the best in such a situation.

cheers,
walter



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20030722000726.X21161>