sendmail vs postfix

[Midiean]

This may not be the correct location for this question, but what the hell.

I have been looking for some sort of comparison on sendmail and postfix email servers, and so far have been unable to find too much on what each has to offer. Could ya'll give me a comparison for the two and which you happen to like better and why.

Also any support URLs you could post would be appriciated.

Thanks
Midiean

 

[lgarner]

They're both MTAs, so I think their offerings are comparable. I like Postfix for its ease of configuration and upgrading. Sendmail always seemed to be a real pain to upgrade following an advisory.

 

[sedj]

This debate has been gone through many, many times.
Search for threads using the Search facility (once its back up).

Its really up to you - just install both and see which you prefer. A lot of people say postfix is easier to configure than sendmail, but I completely disagree with that, and find sendmail a much better & easier MTA. Which brings us to the point - some will say one is better than the other - only by trying both can you really find out !

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[Midiean]

unfortunately in my current position, i don't have the luxury of experimentation with our email server. As i am also new to linux and linux administration, right now i am going off recomendations of expierenced admins. the difficulty of configuration is not an issue.

To narrow down my request a little, which is more stable, are there any features that sendmail has that postfix doesn't have and vise versa, is there any direct user administration configuration envolved or does it pull directly from the system user accounts (does the email server have it's own user database that is uses)

 

[ericbrunson]

I used to administrate sendmail for a university and, though it is learnable, it is extremely cryptic and *historically* has been prone to security issues. I haven't used it for about 5 years since I installed postfix and I've never looked back.

Postfix was designed by one of the internet's most reknowned security experts and was built to be fast and secure. I can tell you it is both. I think it is more easy to understand the configurations than sendmail (even after administrating sendmail on and off for about 10 years) and it is on the cutting edge of implementing anti-spam measures.

You could do the standard test: google for 'postfix sucks', 'postfix rules', 'sendmail sucks' and 'sendmail rules' and tally up the hits. ;-)

 

[shadedecho]

Postfix, IIRC, was designed to be a "drop-in" replacement for Sendmail, meaning it's literally word-for-word feature wise comparable, at least from the client-use point of view. However, having had experience with both, I believe Postfix is way easier to install and configure (on debian), meaning the postfix installation I have now is much more secure and stable than the sendmail one i had before, not as much because of features, but more because I know I have set Postfix up correctly, whereas with Sendmail, even after reading the 1200 page O'reilly tome, I still wasn't quite sure what I was doing.

Setting up a sendmail server shouldn't be that difficult. Maybe this is why so many businesses still turn to the point-and-click wizard-driven email solutions that the M$ world provides.

 

[zeland]

I too will vouch for postfix. After spending about an hour plus on postfix and imap documentation, I was able to replace my existing mail server (w2k+mdaemon). Configuration was easy as I had only to change 4 parameters, mainly, $myhostname, $mydomain, $mydestination & $relayhost. The only thing left now for me is to put in a spam blocker and a web client.


--== Anything can go wrong. It's just a matter of how far wrong it will go till people think its right. ==--

 

[ericbrunson]

If you choose to install postfix there is a support forum here, plus you can find most of the developers, including Wietse, in the usenet group mailing.postfix.users.