Sendmail Version 8
Sendmail is the de facto standard Unix mail server that is included with many of the Linux distributions including Red Hat, Mandrake, and Slackware. Our testing was carried out under Slackware.
The installation was effortless, and by default Sendmail is installed at the same time as the OS. Naturally, you still need to be Linux savvy to complete the configuration, but the installation is an automated process that just about anyone can handle.
Once installation and network configuration was complete, Sendmail required little tweaking--significantly less in fact than Qmail--to get it up and running.
Did we mention the cost of Sendmail? As with Qmail the cost is pretty much nil, as long as you don't need support. If you need support, this can be obtained from third-party companies at a cost. The same caveats regarding free user group and paid third-party support apply as with Qmail.
A commercial version of Sendmail is available from www.sendmail.com. This version not only includes a nicely presented box, documentation, and bundled support, but also features a GUI to help configure the package. Furthermore, the commercial version runs on Windows NT/2000, as well as the many flavours of Unix he free version runs on.
Configuring Sendmail is a long way shy of the simple point and click configuration of the Windows-based products, but it's somewhat easier than Qmail. You still need to know and understand quite an array of Linux commands and their parameters to complete the configuration.
The stock distibution version of Sendmail includes more bells and whistles than Qmail and seems to include most of the basic functionality needed to compete with the Windows applications.
There are even more third-party patches and plug-ins for Sendmail as there are for Qmail, and in general they are free as well. Naturally support for a few of the more esoteric patches may be less than satisfactory.
Because Sendmail is more feature-rich than Qmail, all things being equal it stands to reason that the program will be larger. And it is-1.74MB TARed (mind you this is still miniscule when compared to the Windows-based servers).
Protocol and security support are quite basic but can be easily enhanced with free third-party patches.
As Linux is inherently a network OS, it incorporates remote access as seamlessly as if you are physically on the console either via Telnet or more securely via SSH.
This is true of both Sendmail and Qmail, in fact any application that runs Linux. This provides excellent remote administration facilities to the operator. For example, if your company has a non-permanent or slow Internet link, you can co-locate your mail server at a remote site on a bigger pipe, and you would almost never have to physically visit the site.
Sendmail places all incoming users' e-mail into one easy-to-manage spool directory, unlike Q-Mail, which places mail into each individual user's home directory as default.
Although this technique can increase performance on very large installations (more than 10,000 users), the average corporate mail system would not benefit greatly and would be a lot harder to manage. It would be particularly troublesome as far as managing mailbox sizes, virus scanning, and backups are concerned.
The April 2002 issue of ZDNet Australia's Technology & Business Magazine contains reviews of mail server packages, including Editor's Choice Awards for the best products. For subscription information, visit Technology & Business.
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Tree years ago we were wondering which will be the best mail server to deploy in my office ( we are 25 users). The choice were between Xchg (altough we had a lot of troubles when our EXCHANGE Server bundled in MS Small bussines Server crashed and decided to quit Exchange also It was slow and the client was annoyingly slow)and Domino (my friends told me that Domino was rather complex an expensive to deploy).
My solaris trainer told me "Why don´t you use sendmail. It´s free and works fast"
One day I recieved RH6.2 and it took me 15 days to figure out how to deploy the mail service until I´ve found linuxconf :).
It´s been more than two years now, and the machine works very fast and very well . I used the CPU that nobody wanted (P133 48Mb 4Gb machine)
My experience is that those fifteen days spent in learning worth very well because we saved more than 15 thousand dollars. THNX Sendmail Linuxconf & RH!!!