[Sysadmin] Should we switch mail server software?

Dean Mah dean.mah at gmail.com
Sun Nov 16 20:10:20 CST 2008


On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 5:38 PM, Eduardo Kienetz <eduardok at gmail.com> wrote:

> Given the fact that we don't really host mailboxes, I'd keep qmail
> since that's what apparently would require less 'maintenance' (I don't
> see much point in changing if we don't host mailboxes and we're not
> aiming for performance).

IMHO, performance monitoring (maintenance) is the most time-consuming
thing.  evolt.org is frequently the target of spam, the "joe job", and
backscatter where the load average on the server can be driven up to
greater than 70 because of all of the connections being made to the
SMTP server.  Monitoring the performance of spamassassin and clamav is
important to ensure that they don't hang and to monitor the quarantine
mailbox for false positives and storage requirements.

Ensuring that mailman is functioning properly and that mail is going
out in a timely manner is also important.  css-d tends to notice quite
quickly if something is wrong with the their list and I prefer to keep
on top of that so we don't hear from them.

Dean



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