From: tnp@invalid.invalid   
      
   On 01/02/2026 15:22, Lars Poulsen wrote:   
   > On Sat, 31 Jan 2026 21:22:20 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>>> Maybe not what you want to hear, but perhaps this is a good time to give   
   >>>> up on Sendmail, and switch to a more rationally-designed MTA.   
   >   
   > On 01/02/2026 03:02, rbowman wrote:   
   >>> My memory of sendmail is it filled one of the thicker O'Reilly books all   
   >>> by itself.   
   >   
   > On 2026-02-01, The Natural Philosopher  wrote:   
   >> Indeed. And I owned it.   
   >> In the end it got so complicated that I rewrote sendmail.cf from scratch.   
   >> Got it down to about a page.   
   >>   
   >> All configuration went in half a dozen text files.   
   >> That was before encryption and authentication, though.   
   >   
   > Indeed, the cruft was in the retention of support for long obsolete   
   > features such as UUCP mail and address source-routing.   
   >   
   Ahem. We were the UKs biggest UUCP gateway at the time...   
   So a lot of that persisted BUT we inisisted on internet style address to   
   be used as returns.   
      
      
   > And as sendmail.cf became entirely too unwieldy, they "solved" it   
   > my adding a completely different "high-level" configuration language   
   > in the form of M4 with option names that were similar to the ones   
   > in sendmail itself, but spelled slightly differently.   
   > I never got the hang of writing in sendmail.mc, preferring to hand   
   > edit sendmail.cf, but only in areas where I needed to (which   
   > were very rarely needed and confined to a single line at a time.   
   >   
   Exactly. Like so many clever solutions its is quicker to rewrite and   
   simplify than to learn the new tools...   
      
   > So when I needed to look more closely, I now had to explore the M4   
   > and rebuild the CF file.   
   >   
   > Postfix also has a lot of possible configuration, but it was   
   > surprisingly easy to get a basic configuration up and running.   
   >   
   > At this point, I would suggest that anyone still running sendmail   
   > on a workstation take the tie to bring up postfix at a time when things   
   > are working well, so that the challenge of learning postfix is not   
   > layered on to of time-critical debugging when something fails.   
   >   
   Most people use exim but it barfed all over me last time so I threw in   
   postfix which JustWorked™   
      
      
   --   
   It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.   
   Mark Twain   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)