[lug] Stopping the New Generation of Spam

[Ken MacFerrin]

Daniel Webb wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 05, 2006 at 01:39:48PM -0700, Ken MacFerrin wrote:
> 
>> In postfix, what you're looking for is "Before-Queue" content filtering.
>>  It can be memory hungry, but effective.
> 
> Speaking of Postfix, I've seen a lot of people seem to be using it these days.
> I'm still using Exim since it's the Debian default and I know it, but I'm not
> wedded to it.  What are the advantages of Postfix over Exim?

Most my experience has been with Sendmail, Qmail and now Postfix, I've
only had limited experience with Exim, but there are a couple reasons
I'm pretty much a Postfix believer now:

Customization, extensibility & modular design - Sendmail was the only
other MTA that I had seen with as much flexibility as Postfix when it
comes to add-on functionality, and now Postfix even supports
sendmail-milters as well.  I have 1 Debian machine running 3 separate
instances of Postfix for separate domains and have integrated SMTP/S,
IMAP/S & POP/S (Dovecot), Spamassassin, Razor/Pyzor, Domain Keys/DKIM,
web based user administration (Postfixadmin), Roundcube webmail (with
ajax goodness), web based spam/quarantine administration (MailZu),
reporting (Mailgraph, pflogsumm, Awstats) and mailing lists (Mailman).
This all works well together and only requires minimal attention when
doing updates.

Security - Postfix has a pretty good security track record and active
development community.  Qmail had been my choice for a long time based
on security but the code base is becoming ancient and it felt like I was
working with duct tape and bailing wire by the time I was done applying
all the patches for the functionality I wanted.  Exim also has a good
security record but IIRC, not quite a much flexibility.

That being said, if I was going to use something besides Postfix these
days it would probably be Exim.  From what I've heard, Exim 4 is a
pretty robust MTA.  So, unless you're missing a "must have" feature, it
may not be worth the pain to switch and learn Postfix if you have a
decently complex setup.

Just my two cents..
-Ken