RE: next Beta

["William Wraith" <BWraith wraiths com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jfm2 club-internet fr [mailto:jfm2 club-internet fr]
> Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 11:30 AM
> To: enigma-list redhat com
> Subject: Re: next Beta
the occasion to "steal back" something from Mandrake).  I
> much fear
> that if user sees only sendmail what we will get will not be 
> a sendmail
> site but
> an Exchange site.
> 
> -- 
> 		Jean Francois Martinez
> 
As a relatively new user, your comment inre Exchange struck me.
When I left my corporate job a couple of years ago, I had
to regenerate a network at the home office quickly. Although I had
used unix flavors extensively in various programming roles in the
past (maybe too far back to be that helpful), I had little
experience w/sys admin or linux system setup.

Also, my business contacts and local users are mainly
MS Office users, as much of the world other than systems
professionals is.

 It was very, very easy to regenerate a home network w/win2k/nt,
exchg2k, etc. Now, I have had a couple of linux boxes running 
RH7.0 and am very happy w/ a number of things I can do there and
getting much more comfortable w/the install/admin issues. 
However, I still have been very reluctant to expose sendmail to
the internet as my MX server.
 
Ideally, I should have linux and postfix (it seems this is the 
recommendation from the list)and feed exchg2k locally from
there to satisfy the need to have MS Office. This would allow
much more flexibility to customize the way mail is handled than
I have in the exchg2k environment, and I get the benefits of 
probably better security in an open source environment.

Two things have been a problem relating to this.

1) Sendmail as a default for a new user. It's just hard to get
confident that you have configured properly, especially if you
are worried about security and relay problems, at least for the
less experienced. "Read the entire sendmail book" is
the strident comment I hear sometimes, but really it shouldn't
need to take that much time/effort to set up a mail server that
you feel comfortable exposing to the internet. I will take the
advice, and get postfix. But, it would be nice to have
just known this or had it in there to begin with.

2) The ambiguous advice about methods for configuration. I know it's
great for the more experienced out there to have 25 ways to config
things, but it would be helpful to have one clear set of choices for
newer users that is documented/recommended, e.g. linuxconf seems like
the quick easy config method, but it is full of trouble according to
the list.

Bill Wraith (bwraith wraiths com)

Sorry if this doesn't post in the right thread. I guess this is
one of the problems that would be solved once I can get the
linux boxes as my main mail servers, so I can easily use a linux
mail client that has the right headers. (been told the outlook
client doesn't generate the right headers for threading)