Bye Bye Qmail (on Debian)

I was pretty excited to use the Debian qmail packages, because I’d been compiling them from source for so long, and I’d grown tired of it. Unless you’re running a big mail site, it’s just a hard thing to keep track of all the patches.

Having used Qmail for so long, it’s really hard to let go, but the Debian package isn’t suited for a small email site. Specifically, it lacks SMTP AUTH and a SMTP submission server.

It’s also not been patched with some necessary fixes to allow for larger DNS query results. This means that mail to Yahoo.com addresses bounces today.

I’m going to miss the /etc/supervise style of starting servers.

Qmail will live on, particularly at large sites that are better serviced by the Debian packages. They’re really designed for accepting a large amount of mail into a huge site.

I’m off to Postfix-land.