As an Exim neophyte, here's my opinions:
Steve T wrote:
>
> The questions !
>
> 1. Where does Exim sit in relation to Sendmail. I assume it is a direct
> replacement ?
Yes. It replicates the functionality of sendmail. It runs as a daemon,
sends mail to remote addresses, receives incoming mail, stores
undeliverable mail in a queue and so on.
> 2. What advantages does Exim hold over Sendmail ?
It is a modern mailer with security built in from the ground-floor.
Unlike sendmail which is ancient with security patched on when holes
were discovered. It compiles straight out the box, has a 500kb footprint
and produces informative log-files with tunable verbosity. The
configuration language is to sendmail's what Perl is to assembler, e.g.:
Exim: transport = local_delivery
Sendmail: R$+ < @ $=w . > $#local $: $1
Having said that, you still need to understand e-mail a bit to configure
it properly. But it is easy to get started and you can add complexity as
you go along. I find it very like apache configuration in philosophy.
And you can get an O'Reilly book...
> Especially is it/can it
> be substantially more performant ?
No idea, but Exim can certainly send mails at the rate of around
100/minute via our mail-relay.
> 3. We are 'driving' our current Email sending via a programmatic PHP
> interface to our MySQL customer Db ? This currently uses the PHP mail()
> class. We are finding this very slow and cumbersome ? Any tips or advice ?
I use a perl program with the Sendmail.pm module with no problems. NB
despite its name, this module has nothing to do with /usr/lib/sendmail.
It simply establishes a client SMTP session with a mail-server (in my
case Exim running on the localhost) directly from the perl program.
Rgds,
Owen Boyle.
