[Sysadmin] setting up qmail

[David Kaufman]

Sysadministratoria:

I wasn't actually asking whether we should even *consider* switching MTA's
to something other than qmail.  We are migrating, and to me that means 
moving what we have now, not debating what should have in the future.  I 
don't think it's a good idea to change MTA's during the process of 
migration.  It's simpler and, most importantly, *faster* just to move the 
thing we have now from one machine to a different machine than to start 
discussing, evaluating and testing alternative setups.

So... I hereby self-hijack the "Should we switch MTA's and/or DNS servers" 
discussion to a new thread.

To clarify then, what I meant to ask was if anyone objected to my using 
these unofficial apt-packages to install and manage qmail, or if the 
consensus was that we should again install qmail from source and manage the 
installation ourselves, outside of the package management system.

I personally dislike source installations on Debian systems (especially for 
important threat-facing services like email servers!) because, being 
outside of the package management system, they don't get security updates. 
The excellent package management system has always been one the primary 
reasons I choose to use Debian.

But the packages I propose using are technically not *from* Debian, and
that's why I posted to the list.  They are hosted and maintained by one of
the Debian developers, though.  Normally I would have just installed them
and been done with it, but adding a non-debian repository to the apt
sources.list may have alarmed some of you, so I chose to start a discussion
about it instead.  To reiterate, Gerrit Pape (who maintains this unofficial
apt repository) is the Debian developer who maintain the official debian
packages for other djb packages such as daemontools, tinydns and dnscache,
which *have* been accepted into the official debian sid & lenny repos 
(since
being released as free software).  And Gerrit's unofficial repository has
been online and actively maintained since Woody.  I've personally been 
using
it since I started using Debian, back in 2000.

I'd also add that, since I've been using them, there have been only 2 
updates
to these qmail packages since the original woody package: one to 
accommodate
the Debian upgrade from woody to sarge, and one to accommodate Debian's
deprecating libc6.  There've been no security updates, because there have
been no security bugs identified in qmail.

Responses, so far, to the question of installing qmail from source vs.
using the unofficial debian packages from the Gerrit Pape repository:

  1 - Dean: twice expressed no preference of MTA
      (no comment on the question of source vs. apt installations)

  2 - Me: would strongly prefer to use the unofficial apt packages

  3 - John: "[qmailrocks] exists outside of apt (which sucks)"
      (a preference for apt packages over source installs)

  4 - William: "qmail should die an evil death"
      (no preference re: source vs. apt/deb package)

  5 - Eduardo: "would hardly use Qmail nowadays, but [doesn't]
      really have anything against it"
      (no preference re: source vs. apt/deb package)

So I've taken these hanging chads to The Supreme Court of JFDI, and the 
ruling was:

  2 votes for: qmail via apt,
  0 votes for: qmail via source, and
  3 abstentions

Any appeals?

Any one want to change (or clarify) their vote?

Anyone else want to vote?


-dave