The Postfix program is an open
source offering, available from http://www.postfix.com.
Sun ONE Messaging Server
This MTA is a multithreaded commercial product that purports to be faster and
more scalable than sendmail, and is part of a large commercial offering. Information
can be found at http://www.sun.com.
Sendmail Switch*
This is the same sendmail we describe here, but with selected commercial
enhancements, and a suite of support software that forms a complete email solution.
Additional information can be found at http://www.sendmail.com.
Many other MTAs exist, some good and some not so good. We mention only five
here because, after all, this is a book about the open source sendmail.
1.3.2 Why sendmail Is So Complex
In its simplest role, that of transporting mail from a user on one machine to another
user on the same machine, sendmail is almost trivial. All vendors supply a sendmail
(and a configuration file) that will accomplish this. But as your needs increase, the
job of sendmail becomes more complicated, and its configuration file becomes more
complex. On hosts that are connected to the Internet, for example, sendmail should
use the Domain Name System (DNS) to translate hostnames into network addresses.
Machines with UUCP connections, on the other hand, need to have sendmail run the
uux program.
* This is a professional MTA product, so like sendmail itself, it is, in a sense, a crossbar ???switch.
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