On Friday 17 December 2004 02:41, Richard Lynch wrote: > > There are better, easier to use and more secure alternatives to sendmail. > > True. > > Many of which require that you understand the basics of sendmail before > you use them. Basics such as? You definitely need to know the basics of email (the underlying technology) but I don't see why you need to know Sendmail. > At least, that's been my experience. They are "drop-in" replacements for > sendmail, but if you don't understand sendmail, you're lost. I don't understand Sendmail and have only used it through Linuxconf. But that didn't stop me from being reasonably competent with qmail and Postfix. The only thing Sendmail related that you need to understand is how to use the sendmail binary wrapper that most other MTA's provide to emulate the real Sendmail's sendmail binary. And even that is a tenuous relation because in most cases you don't need to know how the original sendmail binary works. All you need to know is that your MTA has a command called 'sendmail' that allows you to send mail and allows other programs that relies on sendmail to be able to send mail. > A lot of people under-estimate the complexity of email, no matter how much > they THINK they know about how it works. True, that is why using something simpler (that does not necessarily translate to less powerful) instead of the monolithic Sendmail is, for most people starting out, a better choice. The point of this is to emphasize that: - Sendmail is most definitely not the only choice of MTA - Sendmail is (IMO) definitely not the best choice of MTA - you don't need to know anything about Sendmail to be able to successfully use other MTAs - and if you're stuck with Sendmail you should be looking for a way out ;-) -- Jason Wong -> Gremlins Associates -> www.gremlins.biz Open Source Software Systems Integrators * Web Design & Hosting * Internet & Intranet Applications Development * ------------------------------------------ Search the list archives before you post http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-general ------------------------------------------ /* [We] use bad software and bad machines for the wrong things. -- R.W. Hamming */ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
