Re: eQmail or s/qmail

Op 17-05-16 om 17:52 schreef Henning Brauer:
> * Erwin Hoffmann <[email protected]> [2016-05-15 11:13]:
>> Still there is a substantial user base out there
> 
> yes.
> 
> Let's face it: new qmail installs are a rare exception.

As so with postfix, exim, sendmail or whatever.
User just use the package available in their OS.
If p.e. qmail would be a mailer in Cpanel, the user-base would grow
exponential.


> TLS is a nightmare.
> openssl has APIs designed to drive the consumers insane (they provoke
> bad bugs)
> gnutls is a bad joke
> libressl's libtls API is much better, but very young and probably not
> widepread enough yet

I'm afraid whe're stuck with openssl for a long time, just because every
other package assumes you have openssl. Ever looked at the docs when
requesting for a certificate?


>> c) Integration into different OS is still a battle. At least we need to consider *BSD, Debian, 
>> perhaps Ubuntu and the Rad Hat based (rpm) systems like SuSE (in Germany).
> 
> no. POSIX. period.
> 
> and things like file system locations are up to the packagers anyway.

That's right but if the guys at Redhat/Debian don't make a package for
Qmail, then there is no RPM/deb.
And to my knowledge the talk was there to make the source available at
these packages themself.

Personally I would like to add slackware-packages.
But if there's a cut/paste for source-packages then that's also OK for me.
cd /usr/local/src
wget http://...
cd ...
./configure
make
make install


> to be honest, I consider that wasted effort. the world moved on. qmail
> was extremely important at its time, but isn't worth the effort since
> it is a) way too different which makes it way too hard to audit and b)
> its architecture was sane in '98 - but plain doesn't cut it 15 years
> later. This is fundamental and basically unfixable without turning
> qmail upside down.
>
> qmail's place is largely in the history books now. qmail brought the
> concept of privilege seperation - even if it wasn't labeled so - to
> us. Not just MTAs, qmail was one of the first visible bits ever, with
> great influence to everything after. Again, not just MTAs.

as expected: I don't agree.
If you take a look to for example Cpanel: well it's just the same as 20
years ago, only there's a fronted for the commands you make on your shell.
It's even so that when you want to fine-tune the documentation says:
login to the server by ssh...

Postfix/Sendmail etc didn't change, mails are still going in out with
the same SMTP and POP-commands as in the 90's.
Yes, we moved to 64bit and now have IPv6, but all the rest is just
add-ons. The base of all the MTA's is not changed.


> Today, who's still using qmail? Two groups, imho:
> 1) large deployments effectively using their own fork
> 2) a couple of freaks that can't let go :)
> 
> the first group doesn't need a nicely packaged MTA; they have forked
> anyway.

Well they do!
If you read my original mail what started this thread that was exactly
what we needed.
Because all of the forks was installing Qmail a nightmare. I counted 7
patches for qmail-smtpd which had to be done in the right order.
After so many years we had lots of qmail-installations all with
different patches. (for a backup-MX you don't need TLS-patches for
outgoing mail, for mailing-listservers we needed separate queues, for
outgoing mail you don't need RBL's, etc)


> the second will probably never agree on direction.

Agreed with that, also after reading this thread, both eQmail s/sqmail
and Indimail have not quit exactly the same direction,
BUT: I've seen the discussions and we are all learning from eachother.
I really don't mind if there is more than 1 Qmail-successor, it's just
like ice-cream. In the old-days there was only vanille, now you have
chocolat, mokka, lemon, and so on.

I've been working for qmail since 1997, and when there was a problem it
was always with a patch and quickly found. Just spend more then 1 hour
of searching in the exim-config to adjust one setting, only 2122 lines
to read!
So I hope the qmail's are there for another 20 years (until my
retirement:-))

So thanks to Daniel for rock-solid base, and also for Erwin, Kai and
Manvendra (alphabetic order) for picking up the work, without these guys
I would have probably already eaten both of my shoes!

I'm not a guru, but I don't see email vanishing for the coming 20 years,
there's even a chance that the totaly-outdated SMTP-protocol will survive.

P.S.
eQmail s/qmail is missing in the wiki-page of qmail....


Best regards,
Pascal