Doubts about PF, what are the pros/cons about other MTAs?

[Glenn Steen]

On 01/07/07, Mikael Syska <mikael at syska.dk> wrote:
> Hey,
>
> Julian Field wrote:
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> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> >
> >
> > Mikael Syska wrote:
> >
> >> [snip]
> >> I think I'm convinced now ... I'm going to use postfix, since no real
> >> arguments againts it have been made.
> >>
> >> Thanks for the time guys.
> >>
> > I'm going to release a new stable version tomorrow which includes the
> > recent Postfix bugfix to do with its milter support.
> > If you can't wait till tomorrow, then it's already on the website,
> > you'll just have to guess the URL for 4.61.7-1 :-)
> >
> I can wait ... I wont begin on the server until tuesday ... So no
> problems there.
>
> Can't wait to get my hands dirty converting the old amavisd-new setup
> ... some other dude had setup it up, and its a real pain to figure out ...
>
> Btw, read on a page on the internet where a person said that MS did not
> use the resources very good cause its spawning a new process for every
> mail and afterwards closing it. amavisd-new also did that in the start
> but changed over to daemon style ... so its not spawning a new proces
> every time ...
> Is there something about this, or did the guy just not like MS ?
> and if there are something about it ... will MS be changed to spawn
> daemons ?
> what are the pros/cons agints it ?
>
Don't belieeve everything said on the net....:)
MS runs a master and several worker children, which all (incidentally)
work in a daemon-like fashion, and these children will take turns
popping messages from the queue ... They will take as many messages as
necessary to form a batch (1 -> ...many messages) and work on these in
a "group" way... So no "single process for every message" there:-).
The worker children might in turn spawn children to run specific
functions, like AV etc, but they will still work on the whole batch as
such.
Very efficient, very slick.
Of course, as with most things in MS, you can configure the amount of
workers to prespawn, as well as most any aspect of the process...
You'll see, once you start using it;)

What motive the person stating the "one process/mail" thing has, I
surely can't speculate about... But it isn't correct. That much is for
certain.

Cheers
-- 
-- Glenn
email: glenn < dot > steen < at > gmail < dot > com
work: glenn < dot > steen < at > ap1 < dot > se