Customer Reviews

Postfix: The Definitive Guide

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After many years bashing my head against sendmail in all it's gory details I had amassed a fair amount of knowledge and documentation on handling the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) in Linux and Mac OS X. This caused a fair amount of teeth gnashing when I discovered it had gone the way of all flesh in OS X Panther to be replaced with Postfix.

Fortunately, my first needs were simple and I came to realise that Postfix was a much easier system to install and maintain. Now that my needs are more complex, I was glad when this book hit my desk at exactly the same time as I started upgrading the corporate servers from Mac OS 9 to OS X Server.

Postfix: The Definitive Guide seems to fit the bill. It is a well-written and well-constructed guide to mail systems in general and Postfix in particular.

The book starts with a good overview of the underlying technology in Chapters 1 and 2. I can't blame Dent for my slight confusion in the section on addresses and headers - having RFC822 superseded by RFC2822 was just a little too much coincidence for this particular "bear of little brain." He then follows it with a chapter discussing Postfix's architecture, important since Postfix uses a much more modular approach than the sendmail monolith, with each part of the mail handling process a different executable and the single queue turned into five.

Once the background is well covered, Dent then gets onto the nitty-gritty of configuring and administering Postfix. He has certainly covered everything I needed, including spam handling, multiple domains, relaying, SASL authentication and using LDAP. Once I'd finished grokking all that, and getting it integrated into my servers, I had a corporate email system up in three sites that replaced and improved upon a couple of thousand dollars worth of proprietary dreck. Happy is an understatement.

Dent's writing is sometimes a little patchy, though never bad. The technical detail does seem overpowering in places, though, and I occasionally found myself reading a section through more than once with a configuration file open in front of me. There are certainly spots where a little more hand holding and care with the writing would have been appreciated. (If you are a little more cognizant of the interstices of mail systems then you may not have the same problem.)

I did, however, appreciate the appendices enormously. The four appendices cover configuration parameters, Postfix commands, installation, and an FAQ. My system came with Postfix compiled and installed just as I required it so I didn't get a chance to thoroughly test out Dent's installation procedure (though it looks good); the other three continue to be useful.

If you want to have a look for yourself, then the usual O'Reilly page is complete with a table of contents and index, but this time no example chapter is provided (how come, O'Reilly?). You can also get an expanded version of the FAQ in Appendix 4 from Dent's website. A better example of Dent's writing style is an excellent article on troubleshooting with Postfix logs at O'Reilly's Onlamp.com.

This is a good book, Dent has explained the underlying methodology and use of Postfix well, taken the reader through all aspects of this MTA system and explained both the why and the how. I would recommend this book (and, as a result Postfix) to anyone looking for an MTA and a guide to configuring and running it.

After over a month of trying to get my first email server up and running using the try a setting, see what happens method, I finally gave up and bought this book. Now I'm in business.

Everywhere I read, people claimed the easiest to configure MTA was postfix, so that is why I began to use it. True, the documention on the website is helpful and so are the included examples, but if you don't have the concepts down, that is useless.

Thats where this great book comes in. This book isn't just a paper copy of the online docs, unlike most other computer books. It explains what stuff is, does, and what it means. I can read the config file just fine, I just don't know what the settings do. For example, the online docs showed how to setup masquerading and examples, but never told me what that meant. From a newbie standpoint, the masquerade meant the same thing as an alias. Well, those words mean the same thing. I need the vocabulary from the book to help me understand. Conanical is a common work in computer land? Maybe in Silicon Valley but not in NJ.

A glowing chapter is DNS and e-mail which more than pays for the entire book. Not only to I understand DNS better, I can setup a backup mail system. Another great thing is the author shows you an entire setup zone file in one chunk, instead of line by line explanations and never showing you the whole thing put together. DNS and Bind book anyone? For shame.

Also, The Hosting Multiple Domains is a fantastic chapter.

Anyways, if you are lost and feeling like and idiot like I was, get this book. Thanks Mr. Dent for a fantastic book that is clear and easy to understand.

After getting my Postfix server running using online documentation I knew that I had been guessing, and that I would need help to go farther. I started reading the Blum book on the subject, and learned a few things, but I was no less confused.

With Dent's "Postfix: The Definitive Guide" I found what I needed. I have a much clearer understanding now, and I have been able to extend some of the sample code to things I want, such as accepting mail from certain domains on a per-user basis. Highly recommended.

I remember folk on the Postfix mailing list complaining about how long it was taking for this book to be written. Well, I've been writing a computer book for the past year and all I can say is 'I feel your pain Kyle'. Anyway, the wait has been well worthwhile, and possibly a benefit because the book deals with several new features only recently added to Postfix.
You know that an O'Reilly book is at least going to be half-decent, and possibly excellent. In this case Mr. Dent's work has hit the mark spot on, and to my mind earns an excellent rating. Why ? Well, first of all his writing style is clear, concise and easy to read. Secondly he's covered everything you'd want to know about Postfix, rather than an easy feature subset. And third, he's avoided the common pitfall with software guide books where the writer simply presents a jazzed-up version of a reference guide---lists of configuration parameters and their explaination making up the bulk of the book.
Kyle takes the time, and it's much appreciated by the way, to explain how Postfix features work, why they exist (very important), and when they should be used (or not used). I was particularly overjoyed to see that he has covered the configuration of the server to support both SASL and TLS. I'm sure that those chapters will save me _days_ of hair pulling in crypto-hell.
In summary: If you already run Postfix, and you're not Wietse Venema (well, I'm sure he has a complimentary copy already), then RUN out and buy this book. If you don't run Postfix, but were thinking of changing to a better MTA, then consider your options again because now that this book exists, Postfix is a more attractive choice for many admins. Even if you don't ever plan to run Postfix, this book is a pretty good read for those who are just plain interested in e-mail technology.

PostFix is a replacement mail server, MTA, for Unix based systems that
formerly used Sendmail or other variants. PostFix was written to be a
drop in replacement for Sendmail but with it's own variations on control
files.

This book outlines most of the common issues in dealing with setting up
PostFix. The author takes the reader through the design concerns outlined
by the author of the program, Wietse Venema, who wrote the forward of the
book.

Sendmail has been a staple of the mail delivery world but it has a well
deserved reputation for being hard to setup, administer and understand.
The O'Reilly book on Sendmail is at least 3 times as large as this book.
There is alot to learn about its' macro language and using M4 to build
control files. Sendmail is a very hard program for a beginner to
understand and configure properly.

The author spends the first few chapters discussing how a mail server is
supposed to work; how the DNS system interacts with the mail system. There
are well laid out block diagrams to show the flow of email through a
system. Any SysAdmin who has spent time administering a mail system can
probably skip the first few chapters. Those who are new to running a mail
server should find the begining chapters enlightening.

PostFix mostly uses easy to read control files that don't require processing.
The program can be set up to use the Unix standard mbox delivery format or
the newer maildir format. The book explains the pros and cons of the 2
storage formats both from the MTA perspective and the pop or imap
interface.

Most of the more common configuration tweaks used in securing a Sendmail
system also apply to a PostFix installation. They are just easier to set
up in PostFix with the examples provided.

The book has a section devoted to setting up secure mail relay using the
Cyrus SASL libraries. It details setting up the password database via the
Unix standard or shadow format, SASL, LDAP PAM or MYSQL formats. The
author discusses ways to further secure the connection by using TLS
connections to ensure passwords are not compromised.

PostFix has some built in anti-spam tools. The book has a chapter devoted
to to pros and cons of the various approaches. Examples of "reasonable"
and "paranoid" approaches for setting up PostFix are provided. A simpler
apporoach than jumping directly into Spam Assassin or other
spam pre-processors

Mailing lists are another feature that PostFix can manage. The book has
examples of various simple ways of setting up mailing lists short of
installing a separate program like MajorDomo. This is a handy feature.

There are Appendixes intended to walk a user through the compiling process
which will help users not familiar with using Make. There is a listing of
the PostFix parameter commands and what they all mean.

PostFix the Definitive Guide is a well written, easy to read step by step
instruction book for using the PostFix mail server. Using this book as a
reference, an experienced SysAdmin should make the transition from
Sendmail to PostFix without much trouble. For someone new to the world of
MTA's, the book should answer most of the questions associated with
getting a PostFix mail server up and running.

This is another O'Reilly book that should be on a SysAdmin's bookshelf.

I have been trying to convert over to Postfix for the last few months using online documentation. Kyle Dent has done a GREAT job explaining all the aspects of how to configure Postfix and make Postfix do what you want. The examples in the book are just what I needed to understand the complex configurations I wanted to install. I was able to get maillist working, virtual domains, virus and spam testing all integrated with a MySQL backend. I am very happy with this book and would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone trying to get Postfix up and running.

Over 20 years ago, Eric Allman wrote sendmail to handle the then tricky problems of email on BSD and SystemV unix machines. Since then, email has become all pervasive to educated persons. En route, sendmail also grew vastly in complexity to handle this. So much so that just manipulating its configuration files became convoluted. Worse yet was the actual debugging of its source code.

Despite all this, sendmail is still the most powerful Message Transfer Agent on unix/linux. But Venema recently tried a totally different approach. From the onset, he used a modular design and a set of 5 queues in which to process messages. In essence, we have a finite state machine, where the state of a message is the queue that it is in. Dent here shows how Postfix is fundamentally a queue management system. Analogous to how any operating system is basically a file management system.

The hope is that Postfix will be easier to maintain and debug. Certainly, from a sysadmin's viewpoint, the configuration files seem simpler than sendmail's. But perhaps this is partly because Postfix does not yet have the full capability of sendmail?

As a sign of the times we live in, Dent devotes 2 chapters to antispam measures possible in Postfix. This is equivalent functionality to sendmail's Milter API. Likewise, the current Postfix antispam implementations are no more effective than Milter's. Which leaves room for you to try your hand at improving this state of affairs!

As Dent describes, Postfix is now open source and easily available. Still not as widely installed as sendmail. But you now have a credible alternative to it.

I wasn't looking for esoteric information on how to administer Sendmail. I was looking for a book on Postfix and that's what the author provided. I got the book based a lot on the quality of O'Reilly books and the editor's reputation. Andy Oram is a top notch editor. I recommend this book to any Linux or UNIX person wanting to substitute Postfix for sendmail. Postfix is a drop in replacement for systems configured for sendmail but Postfix is not a monlithic program with lots of vulnerabilities. The author expalins that perfectly.

This book is not for a Postfix or mail novice. It does explain many concepts in a proficient manner. It does explain more in depth strategies and configurations. However, if you are new to Postfix and expect it to get you up and running without having to troubleshoot through config files and find hints on the web first, you will be let down.

I bought this book as soon as it came out, and I was reading the docs online more than the book.

What I was really hoping for from the book was how to setup some of the more complex postfix installations, at the time anyway, that the book was supposed to cover. It turned out the book did a poor job explaining what I was trying to do, and I was back to reading forums to get my answers.

The online docs are a much better source of information then the book.