On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Dom Mitchell wrote:
> "V. T. Mueller" <vtmue@???> writes:
> > Trying to convince several people to use linux/exim instead of nt/exchange
> > I would gladly appreciate any detailed information regarding "why NOT to
> > use exchange".
> >
> > I heard stories like 'exchange violates RFCs' and things like that but
> > would like to know more background info.
>
> The most basic problem I have with exchange is that it doesn't have an
> /etc/aliases equivalent. I asked our new Exchange administrator to
I think it's fairer to say that it's /etc/aliases equivalent is
half-featured. You can remap internal addresses fairly easily (it has to be
fairly easy - our Exchange admin figured it out).
If the end-users aren't on Exchange, and you're not running dirsync under
MS Mail, Exchange will happily send mail from any user with a completely
useless return address if they haven't been added to Exchange's address
list.
It will also happily pass mail with invalid forward or return paths.
It'll accept almost anything.
> set up an alias for one address to go straight to another (offsite)
> address and all I got was a blank stare. After much scurrying through
> help fies and manuals, he had to:
>
> * set up a dummy account.
> * set up outlook on that account.
> * set up "inbox assistant" (MS's own mail filtering stuff for Outlook)
> such that it bounced all mail to the external address we wanted.
> Because MS layering is so strange, these rules actually run on the
> server (not where I'd expect them to), so it works.
Hmmm, can this work for an Exchange server that isn't the final mail
destination? I need to have our admin bounce certain sets of Internet
addresses and remap others while letting the bulk of them continue in.
[Direct replies off-list appreciated]
> Needless to say, I was not impressed.
It's one of those completely underwhelming systems that *requires* a
dual-processor 300Mhz box and 256M-512M of memory to even perform poorly.
Oh, and you can't run anything else on the box. Yes, that can be outperformed
by a P-90 running almost any *nix OS and [Exim, Postfix, Qmail, Sendmail,
Smail].
> The other thing with exchange is that you *don't* want to let it loose
> on the Internet. It has no relaying protection that I could find.
None. At all. "It'll be in a future version" *sigh*
> I realise that I am an incredibly biased old Unix admin and if anybody
> does have useful information on how Exchange works and how to avoid
> the above problems, I'd appreciate it. We're stuck with Exchange now,
> so I should probably learn my way around it. *sigh*.
For anyone who's stuck (like I am) with Exchange somewhere in the
enterprise, I highly recommend MXing everything to a Unix box first,
doing what you can translation and bounce-wise there, then forwarding the
end-luser's mail to Exchange. Manglement also seems more disposed to
fronting the evil beasts with *nix than to trying to take the clueless
dolts they've hired and make them think. Let's not even discuss trying
to get brokeness *fixed*.
Ob-anti-MS: Exchange blows goats...
> --
> When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young
> ladies, and, of course, the goat.
Erm....
Paul
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul D. Robertson "My statements in this message are personal opinions
proberts@??? which may have no basis whatsoever in fact."
PSB#9280
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