On 2002-03-19 at 22:36 +0100, Tony Earnshaw wrote:
> > Yes. MMDF. Thus Plc (Demon Internet) -- you'll hit problems whenever
> > you deliver to one of the UK's largest ISPs. Perhaps not so good for a
> > UK academic institution. Same goes for Demon NL [*].
>
> Phil, I don't know who you are, but you do not know what you are talking
> about.
Really?
I'm writing this email from my work address. I am now going to be
extremely careful about what I say, since I theoretically represent my
employer. Our General Manager, if he now sees this, will want to hide
under a desk.
I can provide no help or assistance on Exim from this address. That
thing called "liability", y'know.
> Look at my email address for God's sake. Demon.nl has been using Exim
> for the last 7 years at least. All the punt mail servers are exim 3. do
> 'dig billy.demon.nl mx'. Go on, do it. That's my mail store.
Demon NL's first customer was in 1997, I think.
The post.demon.nl cluster runs Exim. That's for outgoing email.
Exim is in use in various other situations. It is Demon Nederland's
current policy to migrate as many mail systems as feasible to Exim.
However, incoming email for customers goes to MMDF. There are many
reasons for this. Exim is pretty much capable of being dropped in as a
replacement now. But, as always (and as any sysadmin can tell you)
there are gotchas.
Building a new system is much easier than migrating an old one.
Migrating MMDF to Exim, for mailstore drops, over a customer base the
size of ours, whilst guaranteeing that certain unusual requirements also
remain, and tying into many _many_ different systems which provide
things such as "which accounts are valid", "which addresses to filter",
"GSM forwarding" (rules under which a customer can autoforward mails to
their mobile phone), etc, is distinctly non-trivial.
$ dig -t mx billy.demon.nl
[...]
billy.demon.nl. 11h45m IN MX 10 punt.mail.nl.demon.net.
billy.demon.nl. 11h45m IN MX 40 relay-2.mail.nl.demon.net.
[...]
$ dnsname `dnsip punt.mail.nl.demon.net.`
punt-12.mail.nl.demon.net
punt-14.mail.nl.demon.net
$ ssh -l root punt-12.mail.nl.demon.net
[...]
punt-12.mail.nl.demon.net# ps -ef | grep -c '[e]xim'
0
punt-12.mail.nl.demon.net# ps -ef | grep -c '[m]mdf'
56
punt-12.mail.nl.demon.net#
Sorry, dude. Your incoming mail travels a path that is not 8-bit clean.
You should not be recommending to people that they set accept_8bitmime
in their Exim configurations.
> Ever heard of Gyan Mathur? Demon NL? He got me into Exim in the first
> place. All those years ago. "Don't use Sendmail, take a look at Exim".
> Long before 2.x.
Yes; when at work, he sits four or five metres from me. Not at the
moment, since he keeps sane working hours. Unlike me.
I have heard of Demon NL. Yes. Funny how that goes.
And yes, there are good reasons for Gyan to recommend Exim to you. I
think that it is fair to say that any person employed within Thus Plc,
whether in "Demon UK" or "Demon NL", as a Mail Administrator, would not
recommend MMDF to you. Most would recommend Exim. A few like Postfix.
I've seen qmail internally, but if memory serves, not from a mailadmin.
> Nobody, but nobody in the world uses MMDF 7-bit any more, apart from
> die-hard SCO Open Server idiots (of whom I was once one, which is why I
> went over to Exim, thanks to Gyan Mathur).
die-hard SCO Open Server people
"Demon"
maybe some others
> God almighty.
It's probably my turn to polish the Demon Halo (the one over the "e"
which keeps slipping) tomorrow.
--
Systems Administrator, Network Operations Centre, Demon Internet Nederland
NL Sales: +31 20 422 20 00 Thus Plc NL Support: 0800 33 6666 8
