Re: [Exim] A few fairly basic questions ?

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Auteur: Owen Boyle
Datum:  
Aan: exim
Onderwerp: Re: [Exim] A few fairly basic questions ?
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.