[H-GEN] OpenSMTPD - interesting.

[Grant Byers]

On 2 May 2013 19:32, "Stephen Thorne" <stephen at thorne.id.au> wrote:
>
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
>
>
> Email is very hard to implement correctly.
>
> It is even harder to implement it both correctly and be compatible with
all the shitty email server implementations out there, or all the
hand-rolled email sending PHP scripts that open a socket to you to deliver
their mail.
>
> I'm rather a fan of postfix, which is somewhat difficult (it takes
reading documentation and writing a few configuration directives in a well
commented file) to configure, but amazingly flexible and extensible. It
also uses a similar multi-process architecture that OpenSMTPD does.
>
> It also supports plugging in spam filters, which is on the 'Limitations'
section of that presentation (right above "Suitable for lots of use-cases",
take of that what you will).
>

For the past 5 years or so, I've used Postfix with a mixture of address
validation, greylisting, RBLs and sender domain validation. With these
simple measures, I have found I no longer require the overhead of spam
filtering. Occasionally, someone will have trouble delivering legitimate
email to our domains, but that's usually a result of a misbehaving MTA &
greylisting. In these cases, I'll generally put them in a white list (if
their admins are unwilling to fix their MTA).

I also ensure i'm a responsible netizen by ensuring I use SPF and sender
validation. For something to leave the mail server, it must have a valid
return address. Of course, this generally annoys developers that attempt to
send mail out with broken headers, non-existent domain, or from a host not
allowed by SPF, etc. But, we all have a responsibility.


>
> On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 4:40 AM, Daniel Devine <devine at ddevnet.net> wrote:
>>
>> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
>> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
>>
>> I saw OpenSMTPD mentioned in relation to the newest OpenBSD release (I'm
not a OpenBSD user, but I'm curious about OS development in general). I
found a presentation on the project page which I thought may be of interest
to some of the HUMBUG members who have not given their soul and email to
Google.
>>
>> http://www.opensmtpd.org/presentations/asiabsdcon2013-smtpd/#slide-8(HTML/js based slides)
>>
>> I really like the non-bloated feature set, joyously simple configuration
(IMO, though I've come to accept the Postfix way) and because it's OpenBSD
related you know it has it fairly satisfactory on the security side of
things.
>>
>> It runs on pretty much everything Unixy.
>>
>> --
>> Daniel Devine
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