Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!lll-lcc!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU!jordan From: jordan@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: In defense of sendmail Message-ID: <16890@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: Fri, 16-Jan-87 14:12:45 EST Article-I.D.: ucbvax.16890 Posted: Fri Jan 16 14:12:45 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 17-Jan-87 04:49:16 EST References: <1137@ndmce.uucp> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: jordan@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Jordan Hayes) Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 90 Well, I think it's time once again to quell these nasties flying around about what sendmail is and isn't; what it can do and what it can't. Frankly, I'm kind of sick of seeing mis- or ill- informed people passing on incorrect information and perpetuating a lack of understanding. To wit, Terry Poot writes: If I had one that properly handled standard syntax, it'd still mess up, because some sendmail site somewhere scribbled on the From: line. Notice the attack on "sendmail" rather than "novice sendmail maintainer" ...? Just because sendmail is "hard" to understand and use correctly doesn't mean that the program is responsible for some haphazard site running a config file that is destroying headers beyond usability. While it's certainly clear that sendmail has sufficient power to destroy any header, make a note of the fact that there are many sucessful configurations around doing really good things for mail. A few of the better ones have been well documented and made available. There's no reason if you have a reasonable network situation that you can't find a cf file to suit your needs. The reason I haven't installed sendmail is that I hear that the munging of From: lines is unfixable without changing the program (NOT the sendmail.cf). "I hear" ... hmmm ... the From: line is directly managed with the configuration file ... you "heard" wrong. The major problems people run into with sendmail deal with their undertstanding of which rulesets get called where, and what to do about being a gateway site. I understand why people with LAN's use sendmail, but why does anyone else use it? Sendmail has been popular with sites who fall into one of two categories: 1) As you say, have a LAN and want to use SMTP to deliver the mail 2) Those with anything other than a straight network connection. Certainly a UUCP-only site with 4 dialup connections doesn't have a need for sendmail. If you're on the Internet and UUCP or CSNET or BITNET or even have a "UUCP gateway" machine to your local LAN, sendmail may be for you. smail has made my life much easier. It would be easier still if nobody ran sendmail (the headers wouldn't be destroyed). There are plenty of people out there who simply cannot (and due to their network connections, shouldn't) stop running a complicated mailer. When you speak of some of the major mail-handeling sites on the net, you'll usually find them running sendmail, or at least MMDF ... try running a place like ucbvax which is a major UUCP hub, has a local link to BITNET (via ucbjade), is on the ARPANet, has an extensive dynamic local network (some of it registered with the NIC for the sake of the MILNET foot-draggers, some of it not, thus requiring different header syntaxes for different sites), is on CSNET, acts as a mailing list gateway to USENET, etc. to run reasonably without lots of external information. Last I checked, ucbvax would be lost without sendmail. Also, one of the sites I run, ames.arpa (aka !ames), would also be very much in the dark without the features of sendmail. [ a small comment here -- this is not meant to "sell" sendmail to you all, just to point out that there are everyday real problems at sites you all depend on for speedy service that require tools that you haven't taken the time to understand (and, admitedly, need not understand -- smail suits you just fine, and that's terrific) ... please don't cry and whine about things you simply don't have any experience with. ] If sendmail can't be made to follow the standards, why doesn't someone fix it, or write something better. This is really classic stuff. Sendmail has the ability to follow more standards (and has been made to do so) than anything I've ever seen. Sendmail is still being worked on faithfully, and was written with the expressed purpose of addressing (no pun intended) the needs of an ever-changing standards-crazy Internetwork world. One need that it really overlooked was that of a small UUCP-only site. This need has, I think, been addressed (or at least are begining to be addressed) by smail. As with all large software projects, there ae objections all around, but it certainly can "do what you want it to do" in the same way sendmail can do what I want it to. /jordan