What are the Differences between Sendmail and QMail?

ChiChiCuervo asks: "I've been wrestling with Sendmail for the past few months because it's configuration system is a nightmare. So I was wondering what the differences between/benefits of each (sendmail and qmail) mailer were, and what everyone thinks of each."

"fake" domains?

[stevied]

Ah! But what about some "fake" domains that are perfectly valid, but also do not resolve?

In that case, the domains are not valid! Don't forget 'resolution' can mean looking at MX records...

Licensing?

[stevied]

What are the licensing issues associated with either? I thought there were problems with qmail... or am I getting confused with exim?

qmail is nice for a small domain

[henri]

i love it,

i had the sysadmin create a special qmail account for me
this lets me configure all the users for the domian
w/o restarting anything and w/o becoming root

it's really nice to be able to just create a new account
on the fly. it's also nice to have a default forward

now whenever i signup for a site i go w/

[e-mail]

that way i keep kinda track of who is selling mailing lists
and if i'm tired of getting it i just set that user
so it bounces.

again, this is for a small domain (5 users)

henri

Sendmail vs. Qmail

[gavinhall]

Posted by chiem:

BS.

"Add-ons" can be found where you find qmail, at www.qmail.org.

The right way is not to patch tcpserver as tcpserver is merely an interface between TCP/IP connections and STDIN/STDOUT of programs. Tcpserver is from the same author as qmail.
And as the original message stated, qmail-smtpd does not need to be patched.

Notice the original message asked about the "old" sendmail, where there wasn't a "FEATURE(RBL)".

Qmail

[gavinhall]

Posted by chiem:

Everyone keeps mentioning that Sendmail is more mature and Qmail works great, but for small domains.

I don't buy this. I haven't found a case Sendmail fits better than Qmail. Qmail is smaller, yes. Faster, yes. More secure, yes. More configurable, yes.

I don't see how an MTA which forks a massive copy of itself for every duty can outperform an MTA which has different binaries for handling different tasks.

I've used Qmail for an ISP to handle mail for ~1500 domains, and it worked flawlessly. Sendmail couldn't keep up on our hardware.

Qmail is not Open Source

[Paul Crowley]

You're free to modify and redistribute sources but not binaries.

--

Also check out Exim

[Paul Crowley]

Open source, very easy to configure, quite secure. Big installations would probably prefer Postfix but I like exim and run it at home and so (now) do all my friends - I also hacked up a mailing list manager for it.

http://www.exim.org/

--

install-sendmail

[xeer]

I tried both Qmail and Sendmail and in the end found Sendmail easier to work with and configure. Despite what people have said about configuring Sendmail the excellent documentation at www.sendmail.org helped a lot.
I've also written install scripts for both Qmail and Sendmail. The latest script for Sendmail supports release 8.9.2 of that program.
Get them at my homepage above.
That way you can try both programs!
Donncha.

Use postfix

[Christopher Craig]

I've never actually used sendmail, but I've looked at the config files, and they look nasty. sendmail also is a big suid root, sgid bin binary which scares me to death.

qmail is easier to configure, a whole lot more secure (from a design standpoint, I neither know nor care how many holes are actually left in sendmail), and allows users to admin their own lists (which is quite useful). It, however, is not a sendmail replacement. It doesn't use .forward (which all of your users probably use), it doesn't use /var/spool/mail (or the incorrect /usr/mail, /var/mail or /var/spool/mail) but instead insists on putting mail in the users home directory. It also lacks some of the more obscure features of sendmail (such as mail to news gateways). I would say that qmail is just fine if you're the only user of your system or if you have all very educated users. qmail's license prohibits redistribution differing from the original package unless said distribution is approved by the DJB (the author)

Postfix (www.postfix.org) is a new mailer by Wietse Venema co-author of SATAN and author of TCP Wrappers and it's very cool. It was designed from the ground up to be secure. It has an extremely easy to use configuration syntax allows for mail to be places either under the users name in a specified directory (/var/spool/mail) or under a specified name in the users directory, and allows for mbox or maildir formatted mailboxes (most people use mbox, but maildir has better integrity). It also is extremely flexible and can (I believe) do everything that sendmail can at this point. It also allows for users to maintain their own lists. Basically the only reason I would suggest you choose something other than postfix is that postfix is currently in Beta and still under development. (Note that I'm not saying it's not stable. I've been running it and it appears quite stable and secure to me, but it is beta software) postfix is licensed by IBM and the license is sort of odd: it tries to guarantee that the source will be available but makes if very clear that all changes are to be available.

In summary:

• If you absolutely demand truly open software, use sendmail. Though the other two licenses aren't awful, they leave much to be desired.
• If you're running a large server and demand high security (i.e. Hotmail, pobox, Yahoo), do a lot of research and write your own so that it's optimized to your system.
• If you have a bunch of lusers; you don't demand much security, and don't have time to keep up with updates to a beta daemon go with sendmail.
• If you are the only user on your system, or it's just you and your Linux hacker buddies and you don't want to bother with keeping up with updates to beta software go with qmail
• If you want a really cool MTA and don't mind tracking updates (about one a month) go with postfix

Easy Sendmail Configuration w/ Linuxconf

[jelwell]

I use sendmail because linuxconf will generate all your configuration files for you. It even does virtual hosts. So grab sendmail and linuxconf:

http://www.solucorp.qc.ca/linuxconf/

Qmail runs very well

[python_geek]

I've been using qmail for a couple years and it works great. It does feature SPAM filtering and prevention techniques, though some of them aren't distributed with the man package. However from being on the qmail mailing list for a while I can tell you SPAM prevention was a big focus.

Additionally when paired with serialmail qmail runs really well over modem links. You can setup a virtualdomain to hold mail in a queue until a user connects and then flush the mail to the users personal linux box for delivery into user's mailboxes. I realize this can be done with other tools, but qmail does this easily and it works great.

Also regarding a POP server, personally I use a patched version of the University of Washington's POP/IMAP server and it runs really well. I know a large ISP who does this as well.

Finally you may be interested to know that there are some very large sites on the net using qmail, or at least they appear to be (you never know for sure). I believe Rocketmail (or maybe it was hotmail), and Internic were both believed to be using qmail.

Overall I highly recommend using qmail, it runs great and is easier to configure than sendmail.