sendmail 8.13 Companion (Paperback)

by Bryan Costales (Author), George Jansen (Author), Claus Assmann (Author), Gregory Shapiro (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
If you had a list of the words used to describe sendmail, they'd probably include reliable, flexible, configurable, complex, monolithic, and daunting. But you're not likely to find the word easy. Even seasoned sendmail pros are sometimes frustrated by the intricacies of sendmail's configuration files. With a little determination and the help of a good reference book, like sendmail, Third Edition, you can master this demanding program. But when there's a significant point release, like sendmail V8.13, where do you turn? An excellent companion to our popular sendmail, Third Edition, the sendmail 8.13 Companion provides a timely way to document the improvements in V8.13 in parallel with its release. The book highlights the important changes in the latest update to sendmail, pointing out not just what is handy or nice to have, but what's critical in getting the best behavior from sendmail. This is especially important now that spam is on the rise, and because mobile technology requires roving laptops to use encrypted connections. Not surprisingly, many of the changes and additions to V8.13 have been driven by the ongoing fight against spam. Anyone concerned about spam--and who isn't?--will benefit greatly by upgrading to V8.13 sendmail. Among its many enhancements, V8.13 includes new routines that support the SPF sending site authentication standard (in the Milter library), simultaneous connection control, high connection rate control, and finer tuning of SASL parameters. The additions to the Milter library, alone, make upgrading worthwhile, but sendmail's connection control makes it a no-brainer. The key to understanding them is the sendmail 8.13 Companion. The book is divided into twenty-five chapters that parallel the chapters in the third edition of the sendmail book. For instance, if you're interested in Options configuration (Chapter 24 in sendmail), you'll turn to Chapter 24 in your companion volume to find out what's new in V8.13. For a simple dot release (8.12 to 8.13), V8.13 sendmail has added more features, options, and fundamental changes than any other single dot release has included. If you need to set up or manage sendmail, you'll want this companion volume close at hand. Even if you aren't ready to upgrade to V8.13, you'll find the key to understanding them is the sendmail 8.13 Companion a useful guide to understanding and staying current with the latest changes in sendmail.

About the Author
is CTO with SL3D, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado. He has been active in system administration for over fifteen years and has been writing articles and books about computer software for over twenty years. His most notable books are C from A to Z (Prentice Hall), Unix Communications (Howard Sams), and, of course, sendmail (O'Reilly & Associates).

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc. (September 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596008457
• ISBN-13: 978-0596008451
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #960,850 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Companion is Worthless by Itself, November 21, 2004

By	Joseph D. Wagner "TechnoJoe" (Vancouver, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When they said "Companion," they didn't mean Companion for Sendmail version 8.13; they ment Companion for "Sendmail, 3rd edition." This book only covers the updates between 8.12 and 8.13. If you don't know what 8.12 does in the first place, you need to get "Sendmail, 3rd edition" in addition to this one. Other than that, it's a great book.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fighting spam, September 24, 2004

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This slim book documents the latest major release of sendmail. It assumes that you are already well familiar with running an earlier sendmail. The author does not waste your time going over generic properties of sendmail that have been true for years.

The book can be easily summarised as fighting spam. The key changes in 8.13 revolve around this topic. A tribute to the scourge that spam has become.

Perhaps the biggest change has been the enhancements to Milter, which allows filter plugins that are written by third parties (you?), often in C. Then when sendmail gets a message, it applies these filters (there can be several). By this means, you can incorporate any particular antispam methods to the mail. Earlier sendmail versions had Milter. But 8.13 has vastly expanded the scope.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Short book for experts, November 6, 2004

By	Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a very short, but well written and organized book primarily intended for experts. It doesn't introduce sendmail, or provide complete overviews of the system. It covers topics specific to sendmail 8.13. I'm not quite sure why the didn't just come out with another version of the Sendmail book, but they didn't. What you get instead is this book which is a kind of addendum. Buy this book only in conjunction with the Sendmail book.