Sendmail Removed From NetBSD

Derkjan de Haan writes "Christos Zoulas removed sendmail from the NetBSD source tree, after a lot of discussion about its security track-record. Sendmail will remain available from pkgsrc." But without sendmail.cf foo, how will we distinguish between the best admins and the mediocre? Sendmail was more useful as a litmus test than as an MTA ;)

Let the qmail flamery begin!

[Gothmolly]

Now we will descend into a flamewar of qmail vs. courier vs. whateverMTAyouuse. Gentlement, choose one or more of your arguments:

Qmail is more secure.
Yes, the qmail author is a (code wizard|douchebag|weird academic) so I (will|will not) use qmail.
Courier is cooler because it includes an IMAP server in its distribution.
Sendmail is fine these days, its just the n00bs that admin it that make it broken.
Yeah but so is Windows.
So's your mother.
I run on so I'm not affected.
I outsourced my email to gmail and (couldn't be happier|hate it|Google rules|Google is teh evil).
BSD is dying.
BSD is alive.

Unintentional humour

[WalterGR]

Did a little googling for sendmail.cf - the sendmail configuration file - and found this gem [bga.org]. The unintentional humour on the last line is hilarious:

The sendmail.cf has long been renowned for sending system administrators away fleeing in panic...

Just take a look at it on any system; it has traditionally been described as looking like an explosion in a punctuation factory.

The good news is that things are much worse than they look.

Sendmail useful?

[stjobe]

Sendmail was more useful as a litmus test than as an MTA

The entity that was Sendmail, last manifestation of Chaos which would remain with this new distribution as it grew, looked down on the corpse the system administrator and smiled.
'Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou!'
And then it leapt from NetBSD and went spearing upwards, its wild voice laughing mockery at System Security; filling the universe with its unholy joy.

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

I run Windows, so thankfully I don't have to worry about this kind of security issue.

Best way to measure Bat Book size?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. number of pages.
   
2. thickness.
   
3. Schwarzchild radius.
   

Re:The Security Concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing is, I've never heard of anyone losing data or being hacked due to Sendmail. Perhaps it's because the last place I saw it used widely was college?

Some time ago there was a 'hacker' movie made here in Poland. And there was a rather funny scene, where two main characters were trying to break into some server. Best part below:

(from memory)
H1: Wow, this thing is a real fortress...
H2: Did you try to get through sendmail using emacs?

Re:Eric Allman

[Maffy]

<grammar-nazi>

On his development box, he used to keep the source code to unpublished exploits in his home directory that effected the current version of sendmail.

So the unpublished exploits actually brought about the current version of sendmail? That explains quite a lot actually.

Here [purdue.edu] is a description of the difference between "effect" and "affect."

</grammar-nazi>

Re:Let the qmail flamery begin!

[just_another_sean]

Bah. Without confirmation from Netcraft I'm not buying any of it.

Re:Replacement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wine+Exchange 2000

Re:Admin test

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, the God-like admins handle e-mail using Jenga blocks, fridge magnets, and a much-loved picture of Jenna Jameson.