Qmail vs. courier?

mooman · Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2002 5:14 am Post subject: Qmail vs. courier?

I'm building myself a spambox - a linux box that will hit my various ISP POP accounts (cron->getmail), pull the mail down, run it through a few spam filters (procmail + spam-assassin, most likely), then dump that mail into a local mail server. I'll just point my email tools then at my local box rather than the ISP.

I'm still undecided about whether to use qmail or courier as my local mail agent... They both do maildir which is about my only requirement, so I wanted to see what you guys felt was the simpler/more reliable mailserver package? I intend on adding webmail at some point, but there are various ones that will work fine with any maildir package, so I don't think that's an immediate factor. I just want to know which one will give me the least headaches with Gentoo? It's also an older box (PII-266/128M) but lots of disk space in case case that makes a difference....

Oh, and I'm trying to keep the box "light".. so fewer dependencies is better too...

Thanks!
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mooman · Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2002 11:02 pm Post subject:

okay, so I know this isn't as hot as "vi vs. emacs" or "bash vs. zsh", but I figured someone here would have some advice (anecdotal or direct experience) on the subject....? Anyone?

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Linux user off and on since circa 1995

kashani · Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2002 11:19 pm Post subject: Qmail vs Courier

Alright I'll bite.

From what you explained it should be possible to use:

ssmtp for relaying email leaving your system
spam-assassin / procmail for local deleivery
courier-imap for pop3 or imap.

subbing qmail for courier and ssmtp won't add or remove load either way. Personally I found it much simpler to setup Postfix/courier-imap or Courier-MTA then qmail.

Also Courier comes with some nice SSL stuff, I've seen mention of the same with qmail, but I've never used it.

kashani
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mooman · Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2002 11:31 pm Post subject:

Cool, thanks for the insight.

Actually, I wasn't planning on putting SMTP on this box as I'd just let all my other boxes continue to point to my ISP themselves. This just acts as an incoming mail "proxy" that does a lot of filtering and provides a different mailbox to get my mail from...
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Linux user off and on since circa 1995

choward · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 92

I run qmail. I was very impressed by the security record. Not one security flaw has been found in the system since its release in the mid(?) 90s. The author has posted a reward of $10,000 for the first person to find a security flaw. That says something to me.
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Craig Howard
4B Computer Science -- University of Waterloo