[Mailman-Developers] Some notes on my stuff...

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001 19:56:15 -0700 
Graham TerMarsch <graham@howlingfrog.com> wrote:

> I know Sendmail is generally chastized as being slow and doggish
> as far as SMTP servers go, but from having twiddled with it enough
> lately, I'm beginning to wonder if thats just because the default
> config that it builds with is sluggish (as I've been able to get
> ~8-10x throughput from the same server just from reshuffling and
> retuning the config and the queue runners).

Older versions of sendmail had a very deserved reputation for being
asleep at the wheel in the performance arena.  Recent versions of
sendmail have considerably improved, especially in their queue
handling algorithms.  They're still not up to the level of the
competition (specifically exim, postfix, qmail), but they've taken
at least an order of magnitude out of the gap.  

How I look at it:

  Pro: Many old timers know sendmail and are comfortable with Sendmail.
       Sendmail is the default MTA on most (all?) commercial *ix.
       There are readily available monitoring tools for Sendmail
         (snmp etc)
       Supports UUCP better than most.

  Con: Unreadable/impractical/painful config file --
         exim/postfix/qmail/smail all have very human readable and
         well documented configu files.
       Mediocre if reasonable performance.  Requires considerable
         work to tune reasonably.
       Cannot turn off DNS verification for messages received on
         without also universally disabling SPAM checks (per Chuq).
       Unimpressive security history.
       SMail is a lot slicker and easier for UUCP mail than Sendmail
       Poor spool administrative tools (cf eximon)
       While endlessly configurable/extensible, such extensions are
         sufficiently opaque as to be effectively write-only (cf
         exim and postfix in particular)

-- 
J C Lawrence                                    )\._.,--....,'``.	    
---------(*)                                   /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
claw@kanga.nu                                 `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/                     Oh Freddled Gruntbuggly