Exim as default MTA.

[Josh Boyer]

On Tue, 2005-02-22 at 23:05 +0000, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-02-22 at 22:33 +0000, Carwyn Edwards wrote:
> >About a two years ago I sat down to evaluate an MTA to replace sendmail 
> >- I specifically chose postfix because it was simpler to configure from 
> >the point of view of transitioning from sendmail.
> 
> Given that sendmail is widely acknowledged to cause brain damage, that
> is hardly a resounding endorsement. :)
> 
> Seriously though, I'm not sure it's a criterion we're interested in. 
> 
> We should be interested in what's easy to use for someone who's entirely
> new to it. If they're already running sendmail, they can continue to use
> sendmail -- and if they don't want to do so, they can make a choice
> about what to replace it with.

Ok, I consider myself a "newbie" when it comes to MTAs.

I currently run sendmail, but I've done as little as possible to get it
working.  I have no spam filtering at SMTP, no auto-sorting of messages
into folders, basically nothing more than "get the mail to the spool". 

Why?  Because sendmail frightens me, I'm lazy, and what I have now
basically "works" and I don't want to break anything.

Now if exim can be used as a drop in replacement with just a bit of
tweaking for site specific stuff, great.  If I can enable some of the
features I'd like by uncommenting a few options in the default config,
even better.

So I'll bite and look at the latest exim package in FC3 (I am running a
server, so I can't really use rawhide).  I'd be glad to report how it
goes if anyone is interested.

> I think Alan's wrong to suggest that there's no middle ground between
> caring about how easy stuff is to configure, and needing a complete
> point-and-drool configuration GUI for it. We don't _have_ a GUI
> configuration tool for any MTA, but we do have a web browser and the
> excellent and fully indexed Exim documentation, and a bunch of useful
> default features commented out but ready to use in the default config
> file.

As a newbie, I don't really care about a GUI either.  As long as the
documentation is easily accessible and the package provides sane
defaults, I don't see the need for a GUI.

Realistically, it would probably only be used once to setup the mail
server initially.  After that, it'd just sit there on the hard drive
taking up space.  Newbies have a tendency not to remove anything,
whether it's being used or note.

josh