Re: Qmail-Specific?

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On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 09:23:15PM +0000, Sabahattin Gucukoglu wrote:
> What parts of ezmlm are qmail specific, apart from the QMQP?  Why can onl=
y qmail use it?

Technically, QMQP isn't qmail specific, though currently all QMQP
servers that I am aware of deliver to qmail.

The mechanism for ezmlm accepting messages is currently keyed to how
qmail handles things -- the dot-qmail mechanism, and specifically
wildcard handling through .qmail-something-default.  I understand
Postfix at least has a similar but not quite identical mechanism, but it
would require adapting ezmlm.

The mechanism for delivering messages requires qmail-queue.  This too
could be adapted to any MTA that accepts a raw envelope in some form,
except for one detail: VERP.  ezmlm depends on all list posts having a
unique envelope sender in order to most efficiently handle bounces.  I
have no idea how easy it would be to adapt that to another MTA.

So that's pretty much three issues that are specific to qmail (wildcards
for incoming messages, qmail-queue for delivery, and VERP), the first
two of which should be easy to adapt to a different MDA or MTA.  If
there are other other MTAs that do something equivalent to VERP, I would
be interested in adapting ezmlm, provided others can help with testing.

On that topic, I have been musing writing a MDA for ezmlm that was
effectively a stripped down qmail-send+remote.  There are numerous
advantages to integrating with an existing MDA, mostly to do with
duplication of existing code and potential for resource abuse.  On the
other hand, with a custom MDA, ezmlm could do substitutions in the
message during delivery (ala VERH), something that qmail simply is not
designed to do.

--=20
Bruce Guenter <[email protected]>                http://untroubled.org/

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