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From: bruce@balilly (Bruce Lilly)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.3b1
Subject: Re: Silent mail handler
Message-ID: <1991Apr4.014022.8137@blilly.UUCP>
Date: 4 Apr 91 01:40:22 GMT
References: <1991Mar28.150925.703@chance.UUCP> <1991Mar29.105053.20573@blilly.UUCP> <1991Apr2.151024.19209@chance.UUCP>
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In article <1991Apr2.151024.19209@chance.UUCP> john@chance.UUCP (John R. MacMillan) writes:
>Any MTA that's misconfigured can munge addresses.  Smail was designed
>specifically to be easier to configure than sendmail, and having used
>both, I simply think they succeeded.

1)	Being "easy to configure" is no benefit if the program doesn't do the
	job.
2)	given an address "foo%bar@fribble.com", and *after* smail has had the
	"attributes" fixed, it sends to the host for fribble.com a pseudo-address
	which looks like "foo%bar" which is NG. Ergo, smail (3.1.18.1) still
	doesn't properly handle the RFC1123 "%-hack".

>Don't you suppose there was a reason that everyone was quick to blame
>sendmail?

Ignorance and malice are responsible for many of the world's problems
(N.B. no smiley).

>Also sounds like TFM has improved, because what the vendor-supplied
>version I had to use came with was next to useless.

The same Fine Manual, written by Eric Allman, which has accompanied the
sendmail source distribution for ages. If your vendor of binaries hasn't
included documentation, complain about your vendor, not about sendmail.
Better yet, get the source distribution and compile it yourself.

>I don't want this to degenerate into an MTA flamefest, so this is it
>for me on the subject.  Closing arguments:  I've used smail, MMDF, and
>sendmail, as well as looked over or worked on the code for all three,
>and IMHO, sendmail is the most difficult to configure.

Flexibility (i.e. the ability to do the job right) does not come without a
price. I've no experience with MMDF, but configuring smail, if your
criteria for configuration includes that the result must work properly, is
far more difficult with smail than with sendmail. To properly configure
smail, one must rewrite much of the code, which is rather buggy (see
examples above). And yes, I have worked on smail as well as sendmail.

If you're happy with smail, fine -- I much prefer sendmail. I gues we can
agree to disagree.
-- 
	Bruce Lilly		blilly!balilly!bruce@sonyd1.Broadcast.Sony.COM