Because we've had these boxen for a good while now, and we've used NT for this job for a while (don't even
ask)..., and I'd need some BIG justification to switch.
NT is good enough that it does the job we want. We have lots of Solaris around, but I don't know of anyone
around that uses Solaris/x86 (Solarix86?), and it would cost too much money to replace the hardware as well as
the software. I would love to go Unix here, but it probably won't happen without a 20-point detailed list of
why NT is inferior to Unix for E-mail serving (do you happen to have one lying around? :) ). We've had most of
our problems with the MTA we're currently using (name withheld on purpose); few can be directly attributed to NT
(though there have been some). In short, "It ain't gonna happen anytime soon."
Basically, if it's too difficult to use a Unix MTA on NT, the decision will go toward using another NT MTA on NT
rather than using a Unix MTA on Unix. None of the NT MTAs that we've looked at have source available (or at
least we don't want to ask how much $$$ the vendors want for it if they do), and I think it's more desirable for
us to be able to fix problems ourselves rather than have someone to point fingers at if it breaks--so I'd rather
go the Unix MTA route if it's reasonably possible.
If nothing else, using a Unix MTA will give us one more bullet point on our list of reasons to switch to Unix at
some point in the future: "Things will work much better natively than over an 'emulation' layer."
Jason B.
"Dave C." wrote:
> If these boxes are dedicated for email, why on earth are they running
> NT anyway? You should just queue off any mail they currently have, and
> install an OS more suited to the task of handling Internet email. You
> can either use a free OS such as Linux or Free/Open/Net BSD, which the
> budget department will like, or if the PHB's want a 'commercial' OS
> with someone they can sue, SCO and Solaris are two I can think of.
> NT is probably about the WORST platform to handle Internet email on. I
> think even Macs are better, although I have no experience with Mac
> email. Using a unix MTA on an NT box is only half right - why not be
> 100% right and go with a unix platform and a real MTA?
>
> On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, Jason Bucata wrote:
>
> > I'm interested in running either Sendmail or Exim on some NT boxen we have
> > dedicated for E-mail use. How much effort would be involved in getting Exim
> > to compile on NT using Cygwin? What kind of performance might I expect?
> >
> > I'm advocating to our team a Unix MTA instead of a closed-source NT-based
> > MTA, which is what we're wanting to replace in the first place. I really
> > like the idea of having the source so we can tweak it to do *exactly* what
> > we want. (Oh, and the price is right ;).)
> >
> > I've already asked on the Cygwin mailing list, about both Sendmail and Exim,
> > but haven't heard anything about Exim there yet. (Some people have done it
> > with Sendmail already; there are some patches floating about.) I'm
> > interested in hearing the balanced perspective, especially since I'm not
> > sure which of the two I (or anybody else involved with this!) would prefer.
> >
> > Jason B.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > ## List details at http://www.exim.org/mailman/listinfo/exim-users Exim details at http://www.exim.org/ ##
> >
