Re: [Sheflug] exim / general MTA comments.

[Richard Stevenson <nospam [at] team.xtra.co.nz>]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, Chris J/#6 wrote:

> > IIRC the vuw.ac.nz servers are on Sendmail - why?
> > What is it that QMail/PostFix/Exim can't do that
> > 6-monthly-security-nightmare-Sendmail can achieve?
>
> Depends how long vuw.ac.nz has been chugging along. A 10 year old sendmail
> config at a university which probably has a large alias database and other
> little features would probably take a while to move to another MTA. Time and
> money :) Sendmail though is a lot better than it was for security though.

The VUW servers have been around for a few years, and do a whole bunch of
address rewriting and other uglies.  At last count, they had seven
separate alias files, a mailertable, and a genericstable that applies to
all subdomains (there used to be custom rulesets to handle that - it's a
standard feature as of Sendmail 8.10, IIRC).  Oh, and the header-checking
rulesets to stop some spam.  There are also two separate list servers, and
if anyone could be bothered, they could tie into the existing user
authentication database for SMTP AUTH.  Someone would have to hack
Cyrus-SASL to do it, though.  It's an easy hack, mind you... I could
probably do it myself in a day.

Cheers

Richard

-- 
Richard Stevenson, Systems Support Specialist, Telecom Xtra
Phone: +64 9 355 5231   Mobile: +64 25 290 3101   Pager: +64 26 100 155

NT-powered-cellphones: who do you want to hang up on today? -- Tanuki the Raccoon-dog

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