Replacing Sendmail with Postfix in the base system

[Matthew Dillon]

:
:>     Not enough functionality.  A basic refusal by the authors to bring
:
:Which functionality is missing? Usually sm8 is considered the MTA
:with the most functionality.

    For example, local user feed-through aliases using '.'.  For example,
    all the stupidity with turning simple control files into DBM databases.
    All the crazyness about whether the strings in the DBM files are case
    sensitive, or case insensitive, or include the terminating \0 or not.
    
:>     the feature set into the 21st century.  The code is a huge mess.  They
:
:What did the authors refuse?

    The CF file structure is a ridiculous, unreadable mess.  As long as you
    stay within the bounds of the MC control file it is ok.  The moment
    you have to do something that hasn't been wrapped by MC, though, good
    luck!  I consider myself almost an expert and messing with CF files and
    I really, really, *REALLY* hate the fact that sendmail hasn't fixed any
    of the tab/space formatting issues and hasn't removed any (or much of)
    the old cruft or cleaned up any of the syntax.

:>     added threading without dealing with races.  They added all sorts of
:
:sendmail 8 has threads only in libmilter. Where are the race
:conditions?

    Where?  If I knew that there wouldn't be any now would there!   I
    have to use libmilter.  It's a godaweful mess.  For example, if my spam
    filter crashes for whatever the entire sendmail system hangs.   If I
    start things in the wrong order (milter process vs sendmail), the entire
    sendmail system hangs.  There is NO robustness.  I can't even restart
    the milter filter without sendmail going nuts.  I have to kill EVERYTHING
    and restart EVERYTHING.

    Sendmail's queueing system is still as big a mess as it was 15 years ago.
    15!  They added multi-queues which are so deficient the home grown
    multi-queue system I wrote for BEST Internet was lightyears better then
    the crap they have now.  The DNS cache has caused me more problems over
    the last decade then I can count.

    If I sit down and fume for another hour I can probably think up of
    another dozen problems.

    In anycase, the NetBSD move was probably due to a new sendmail issue 
    currently being circulated by CERT which will be announced soon.  It
    is mainly due to yet more badly written code.  I think they finally got
    tired of having to deal with it all, and I don't blame them because I
    am in the same boat.

:Note: I _really_ would like to know this. I agree that the sm8 code
:is a (20 year old) "mess", but I do not know about those items that
:you mention above (and I should know as I'm the maintainer of
:sendmail).
:
:>     junk without cleaning up the existing junk.  I never liked the sendmail
:>     code but I really *HATE* it now.
:
:That's why I am writing sendmail X. Give it a try.
:http://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/sm-X/

    Urm.  I dunno.  I think I'd rather we moved to a postfix default, just
    because postfix has been out there for a long time now and is a
    completely proven subsystem.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>