[GLLUG] Postfix or Exim?

[Adam McDougall]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2007 at 03:50:42PM -0500, Marshal Newrock wrote:

  On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:22:15 -0500
  Ian Fitzpatrick <ian at yjusa.com> wrote:
  
  > Hi All,
  > 
  > It's slow season at the company I work for, and that means I can  
  > finally migrate them off our godawful Network Solutions hosted  
  > email.  I'm thinking to go with an Exim/Dovecot combo, and just  
  > wondering what people's thoughts are on Postfix vs. Exim.  I've used  
  > both, but only on testing or home systems.  I think I'm ready to
  > pick up a book and really familiarize myself with one of these MTAs.
  > 
  > My requirements are pretty basic:
  > 
  > 1.  Stable and secure
  > 2.  Plays nice with dovecot
  > 3.  Ease of administration (initial configuration not withstanding)
  > 4.  Active and at least somewhat friendly development & support  
  > community
  > 5.  Marketability:  This is a bad reason to pick technology I know,  
  > but I am kind of curious which of these are most widely deployed
  > (and so which one future employers might look for in an applicant)
  > 
  > Performance is not much of a concern, we're a small company and only  
  > have 35 or so employees.
  > 
  > It seems like both Postfix and Exim could fulfill all of my  
  > requirements.  I read some comparison articles on the two MTAs, but  
  > it usually seems like it's a wash.  What might tip you in favor of  
  > one versus the other?
  
  I deal with postfix quite regularly, and exim as I need to for CPanel.
  I have far more postfix experience than exim experience.
  
  That said, the most noticable difference I can see is that the postfix
  configuration seems to be much simpler and easier to learn than exim.
  exim requires several components to be configured, and then put
  together, whereas in postfix, each item tends to be a separate, usually
  independent, line in the config file.  exim can also do a little more
  with aliases and the like.

I have not used exim but I agree that postfix seems simple to configure 
and the documentation is pretty good on their website or other tutorials 
on the web.  Most of the configuration can be done in only one file 
(main.cf) and if you prefer to script changes to it, you can use 
'postconf' to replace settings for you in the config.  You could use it to 
script changes to you server, for example if you wanted to add a new 
domain name. I use this feature for newly setup servers; I grab the latest 
stable release of postfix then use postconf to update the config values I 
care about.  This way I don't have to worry about carrying around an old 
copy of the config file with outdated values. Although I have taken 
main.cf with me for years and years without a single change required due 
to upgrades.  (master.cf sometimes needs some during major version 
upgrades but the file is small...)

Whenever I sit down and want to configure something in postfix that I have
not done before, most of the time I end up pleased at how simple it was
to look up in the docs, try it, and it just works.  You'd think it would
be hard to setup antivirus, greylisting, blacklisting, smtps, submission,
etc but its easy. 
  
  My personal preference is for postfix.  You can get a basic setup done
  quite quickly.  The documentation is also excellent.
  
  > And while we're at it, if anyone can tell me a reason why I would  
  > should pick Cyrus over Dovecot, I'm all ears.
  
  I can't give you a reason.  Postfix 2.3 can use dovecot for sasl
  authentication, replacing arcane, poorly documented, and difficult to
  debug cyrus-sasl. I believe recent versions of exim can as well.
  
  -- 
  Marshal Newrock, Ideal Solution LLC
  http://www.idealso.com
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