Hello, Today I searched redhat official portal and learned that Sendmail is considered deprecated. By default, CentOS 7 will use postfix as MTA. I need good advise on what it means to us. We are CentOS customers. We use that operating system for quite a few years. We rely on Sendmail for years for us to relay large quantity of emails to our customers for marketing purpose. We build our additional fallback servers as well for fallback relays. We build our customized configuration for Sendmail too. I really need help to figure out if we can continue using Sendmail (even deprecated) for future long term and what implication would be doing so. Thanks, - xinhuan
On Fri, March 31, 2017 3:57 pm, Xinhuan Zheng wrote:> Hello, > > Today I searched redhat official portal and learned that Sendmail is > considered deprecated. By default, CentOS 7 will use postfix as MTA.That was an excellent decision I welcomed the day RedHat made it. Beginning with my firat RedHat (it was somewhere around RedHat 5 IIRC) I always have been replacing venerable sendmail with postfix.> I > need good advise on what it means to us. We are CentOS customers. We use > that operating system for quite a few years. We rely on Sendmail for years > for us to relay large quantity of emails to our customers for marketing > purpose.Well, it sounds like you are one of the companies with whose effort I have to fight constantly in my own effort to protect our users from spam... Valeri> We build our additional fallback servers as well for fallback > relays. We build our customized configuration for Sendmail too. I really > need help to figure out if we can continue using Sendmail (even > deprecated) for future long term and what implication would be doing so. > Thanks, > > - xinhuan > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On 03/31/2017 01:57 PM, Xinhuan Zheng wrote:> Hello, > > Today I searched redhat official portal and learned that Sendmail is considered deprecated. By default, CentOS 7 will use postfix as MTA. I need good advise on what it means to us. We are CentOS customers. We use that operating system for quite a few years. We rely on Sendmail for years for us to relay large quantity of emails to our customers for marketing purpose. We build our additional fallback servers as well for fallback relays. We build our customized configuration for Sendmail too. I really need help to figure out if we can continue using Sendmail (even deprecated) for future long term and what implication would be doing so. > Thanks, > > - xinhuan > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >You can still install sendmail, but postfix is the default, a decision I personally support as I have found it to be a lot easier to administer than sendmail with a much better security track record. Historically, you would use system-switch-mail to select your preferred MTA to switch from the default. I don't know if that is still the method, since the default now is what I prefer.
On 3/31/2017 2:15 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:> Well, it sounds like you are one of the companies with whose effort I have > to fight constantly in my own effort to protect our users from spam...What makes Postfix superior in fighting spam? How do I integrate MIMEDefang, SpamAssassin, and ClamAV with Postfix? Are there migration guides for moving one's Sendmail anti-spam and AV configurations to Postfix? --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
On 01/04/17 09:57, Xinhuan Zheng wrote:> Today I searched redhat official portal and learned that Sendmail is > considered deprecated. By default, CentOS 7 will use postfix as MTA.It is considered "deprecated" as you say, but that does not mean they no longer support it. You can use Sendmail in CentOS 7 just fine and it is relatively easy to switch (complexities of proper Sendmail configuration not withstanding). I think in this case they simply mean that Sendmail is not the default, but that does not mean it is not supported in any way.> I need good advise on what it means to us. We are CentOS customers. > We use that operating system for quite a few years. We rely on > Sendmail for years for us to relay large quantity of emails to our > customers for marketing purpose.Admittedly this sounds like SPAM, but not all mass marketing mail is SPAM and it can be done in a way which is not. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.> We build our additional fallback > servers as well for fallback relays. We build our customized > configuration for Sendmail too. I really need help to figure out if > we can continue using Sendmail (even deprecated) for future long term > and what implication would be doing so. Thanks,I would say that Sendmail will likely continue to be supported at least through the lifespan of RHEL7, I cannot speak as to whether it will be supported in RHEL8 or not, but if you want to continue using Sendmail and you feel comfortable using it, then by all means use it. That said, I would encourage you to have a look at Postfix, you can do pretty much everything you do in Sendmail in Postfix and more and the configuration is easier to manage. Postscreen is one of the newer postfix features that you won't find in Sendmail and you may find that alone is worth the switch. Peter
On Fri, 31 Mar 2017, Xinhuan Zheng wrote:>Today I searched redhat official portal and learned that Sendmail is >considered deprecated. By default, CentOS 7 will use postfix as MTA. I >need good advise on what it means to us.As of today you don't need to do anything, apart from explicitly installing Sendmail after any fresh install (either in the installer or any time after), e.g., yum install sendmail && yum remove postfix. But deprecated suggests it will eventually be made unavailable so it would be wise to begin planning to transition to an alternative, though when that will happen is unkown so there's no timetable you can work towards. Since Postfix is the only other MTA they provide that's what you should consider most strongly, though if you'd like alternatives EPEL provides at least Exim and OpenSMTPD. /mark