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

[Mikael Syska]

Glenn Steen wrote:
> On 01/07/07, Mikael Syska <mikael at syska.dk> wrote:
>> Hey,
>>
>> Julian Field wrote:
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>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > 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.
So whenever MS checks the mailqueue it takes all the mails in the queue, 
and runs a batch agains them ? and then again in x seconds with a new 
batch, taking mail that havent been handled?
> Very efficient, very slick.
If the above is right, this seems like its using the resources better 
than amavisd-new maybe, but theese days Ram and harddrives are very 
cheap, so if it just runs fast, i'm happy.
> 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;)
Think this cleared any doubts i had.
>
> 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.
Can't say, lost the url... but if one process can handle multiple mails 
in the same run, it sounds great.
>
> Cheers
// Mikael Syska