Why is Sendmail still around?

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 29 Mar 2019 14:01:10 +0000, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Mar 2019 12:12:12 +0100
> Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
> 
> > If you know an easy way to do the same as above, but with SMTP,
> 
> 	The mail relay uses SMTP, if you need to pass authentication
> details then you need to use the authinfo file AIUI, I've never tried it
> with sendmail I use exim to relay outgoing mail from clients to an smtp
> relay - my ISP provides one but it fails to deliver to some places.

In my specific case, there are two providers involved:

The Internet (connection) provider who provided the relay, and
the only authentication they needed was "source IP must be one
of ours", so it was very convenient and worked even when I got
a new IP address (dynamic allocation).

The mail provider (a different one) provides IMAP, POP3, SMTP.
This is the one I now have to "contact directly" via SMTP from
within the MUA, and I found out that what I took for granted
for decades was just a nice gift of my ISP. Let's say I compose
a message with attachments, click on "Send", swoosh, in less
than one second the encoding is done, and the mail is out.
Read: Out to the sendmail doing everything else (contacting
the MX and sending the message) in the background. Now I can
watch the progress bar slowly crawling while the GUI mailer
sends the message via SMTP to the mail provider...

This is not normal! :-)



> > and now have to wait for the annoying progress bar instead of
> > the previously possible "click and forget", and I currently
> > do not have my own _real_ mail server... ;-)
> 
> 	I wouldn't attempt to run an outgoing mail server doing direct MX
> lookup and delivery these days they anti-spam measures are a nightmare.
> OTOH reliable delivery relays are not that common either.

Yes, it's not as easy anymore... You have to fight "we know better
than you!" providers who consider every IP from a dynamic range
a spammer, even though their own ranges are full of compromized
"Windows" PCs that spam the world. You also have to "earn trust",
especially from providers like GMX, Hotmail and others which are
known to be commonly used for spam. Then you also have to deal
with certificates, signatures, anti-spam mechanisms, lists, and
all that stuff that didn't matter decades ago.

This also isn't normal.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...