Amazon.com: The Book of Postfix: State-of-the-Art Message Transport (9781593270018): Ralf Hildebrandt, Patrick Koetter: Books

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Ranks among the best technical tutorial books I've encountered." -- OSNews, February 9, 2006

...packed with documentation, answers to common questions, examples, and tips on everything from filtering spam to authenticating users. -- Midwest Book Review, Internet Book Watch, September 2005 (http://www.midwestbookreview.com/ibw/sep_05.htm)

An essential reference for anyone determined to build or maintain a reliable and secure mailserver with this well-known software application. -- Midwest Book Review, June 2005 http://www.midwestbookreview.com/ibw/jun_05.htm

How good is it? Very… definitely recommended to any Postfix administrator. -- Cricalix.com, March 27, 2005

I wasn't prepared for just how good it is. There's stuff in here for everyone. -- Neohapsis, March 30, 2005 http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2005-03/2435.html

It covers a lot of material to a very high standard, whilst also remaining very readable. -- Debian Administration, June 27, 2005

Provided just the right amount of introductory material... loaded with information and examples that will help you quickly and easily. -- Linux Magazine, August 2005

The book will save you time and help you configure a secure and fast mailserver. -- Netsurfer Digest, May 31, 2005 http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/

Truly well-written, starting from the ground up. -- InfoWorld, July 14, 2005,

Whether it's for your job, your business, or your hobby, managing Postfix-based email server is best done with this book. -- Linux.com, August 10, 2005

About the Author

RALF HILDEBRANDT and PATRICK KOETTER are well-known figures in the Postfix community. Hildebrandt is a Systems Engineer for T-Data, a German Telecommunications company. Koetter is an Information Architect at the University of Munich.

Koetter is information architect at the University of Munich.

Product Details

Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: No Starch Press; 1st edition (March 25, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1593270011
ISBN-13: 978-1593270018
Product Dimensions: 7 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,014,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars

5 star		13
4 star		4
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful

Probably best Book of 2005 (12 out of 10 possible stars)

By Nils Valentin on April 4, 2005

Format: Paperback

O.K, finally the book arrived after waiting what I believe must have been nearly a year by now.

In the above mentioned book Patrick Koetter and Ralf Hildebrandt are walking you through the basic setup options and everyday scenarios a typical administrator will come across.

I have been setting up postfix not the first time. I understand that Patrick
and Ralf are doing an outstanding job taking the reader by the hand. I dont
want to push it, but they almost make it look like configuring postfix is a walk on a spring sundays shiny, sunny afternoon.

The book basically pays for itself within a couple of days, especially
taking into account the research time you would need to carefully find out the many details which are hidden in the book. This book gives you the best "Bang for the buck". Short precise descriptions, lots of tips and tricks all the way along and tutorials for far more scenarios than I could have imagined.

When I did the setup for a postfix server the first time without the book (80
user accounts + multiple domains + anti virus + anti spam + pop-before-smtp +
sasl + etc.) it took me not less than a month and a whole lot of headaches and long overtimes.

Those issues are gone. If I would have had the book at that time,
that alone could have saved me at least 2 weeks.

"The book of postfix" is an excellent wholesight INTRODUCTION for mail server
administrators. The book contains more scenarios than the average joe sysadmin can imagine. ALL are thoroughly described.Read more ›

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

Instructive and detailed

By Eric Wuehler on April 4, 2005

Format: Paperback

I picked this up to help me get Postfix running on my Mac - which it did nicely. I doubt any Postfix admin will be disappointed with this book, although it has way more information than I need at this point... Always a good thing when a book answers your questions now and can answer new questions in the future. =)

I'm no Postfix expert, but I this book is incredibly detailed and probably doesn't leave anything out. I really like the fact that it doesn't just tip-toe through the config files and options. It goes into a lot of detail, with a lot of instruction and examples. More importantly, it steps you though how to test your configuration to verify any changes you make.

The appendix describes how to install Postfix on Debian Linux or Red Hat Linux, so if you need detailed installation instructions for other platforms, you need to look elsewhere. However, once you get Postfix installed, this book will not disappoint.

Very well done.

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

Best book on the subject.

By Brad Knowles on December 7, 2006

Format: Paperback

I own all the books on this subject that I know of -- the two others being Kyle Dent's book "Postfix: The Definitive Guide" (written with Wietse Venema and published by O'Reilly), and "Postfix" by Richard Blum.

Ralf is one of those kinds of guys that participates actively on various Postfix-related mailing lists, and widely shares his knowledge with anyone who needs help. And he has an excellent style of writing.

Normally, O'Reilly books are the definitive standard by which all other technical books are measured. In this case, while Kyle's book was co-written by the author of the software, I think that Ralf has the better book.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

Excellent Book - With Errors

By Michael B. Harris on June 29, 2005

Format: Paperback

This book, all in all, is a great book. It has great documentation, even a little bit on hard-to-find/obscure topics. I would have given this book a 5 star rating except for my two biggest problems with the book:

1) I suggest you review the books errata at [...] there are some glaring mistakes made, and I wish they could have been fixed before the book went to printing. I understand that nothing is perfect, and that there are misprints and any number of errors that can occur, but this is a big problem in technical books.

2) While the book does offer examples, descriptions, and build notes about building Postfix, I think it is missing a larger troubleshooting chapter. I think the book needs to dive in further and talk about more configuration conflicts that can occur, and needs to talk the user through the troubleshooting steps, more clearly, and give a more consise error message that a user may get running Postfix.

After talking about my two biggest gripes about this book, I will finish by saying this is a very good book, and I do completely recommend buying this book if you plan on running Postfix.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

Great Book

By Andrea A. Gallega on August 19, 2005

Format: Paperback

I'm a linux newbie trying to explore its powerful features and experimenting with open source technology. This book is a great help for me as a linux newbie in setting up a mail server. Howeer, just make sure you visit the website of this book because there are many corrections. I hope an improved version of the book will be released soon.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Postfix at your fingertips

By speedread on February 24, 2006

Format: Paperback

"Postfix, State-of-the-Art Message Transport," fills at least some of the gaps one is confronted with when making a rather major transition from other MTAs like sendmail to postfix. While the initial installation and configuration of Postfix has generally been trivialized, there are indeed such a plethora of options (and rightly so, as many settings one established for sendmail are equally desirable in postfix) that searching via the Web for the right combinations of parameters to achieve a particular result can be very frustrating. This book does provide some solid, practical configuration examples and above all, some in-depth explanations of various security models (including TLS), LDAP-based authentication, and many other useful topics.

Some things, however, are glossed over and left to the tyro to figure out solo. All-important parameters such as smtpd_client_restrictions are glossed over. On the other hand, some parameters are covered in great detail, so overall, treatment of many of the hundreds of configuration parameters is uneven. Even though published in 2005, things are evolving rapidly enough in postfix that certain newer parameters, such as smtpd_junk_command_limit, are evidently not discussed here.

Still, this work represents a good example of what can be done to make life easier for the postfix administrator by collecting a lot of information in one tome and alleviating some of the frustration of long Web searches to hunt for answers to esoteric (and not so esoteric) postfix questions. I am overall quite pleased with this book and would recommend it to postfix administrators of all levels.

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