Postfix : The Definitive Guide

Rating:
Summary: Not for the newbie
Review: After getting my Postfix server running using online documentation I knew that I had been guessing, and that I would need help to go farther. I started reading the Blum book on the subject, and learned a few things, but I was no less confused.

With Dent's "Postfix: The Definitive Guide" I found what I needed. I have a much clearer understanding now, and I have been able to extend some of the sample code to things I want, such as accepting mail from certain domains on a per-user basis. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Finally I Feel Comfortable with Postfix
Review: After getting my Postfix server running using online documentation I knew that I had been guessing, and that I would need help to go farther. I started reading the Blum book on the subject, and learned a few things, but I was no less confused.

With Dent's "Postfix: The Definitive Guide" I found what I needed. I have a much clearer understanding now, and I have been able to extend some of the sample code to things I want, such as accepting mail from certain domains on a per-user basis. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Well written, flawed guide to Postfix
Review: After many years bashing my head against sendmail in all it's gory details I had amassed a fair amount of knowledge and documentation on handling the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) in Linux and Mac OS X. This caused a fair amount of teeth gnashing when I discovered it had gone the way of all flesh in OS X Panther to be replaced with Postfix.

Fortunately, my first needs were simple and I came to realise that Postfix was a much easier system to install and maintain. Now that my needs are more complex, I was glad when this book hit my desk at exactly the same time as I started upgrading the corporate servers from Mac OS 9 to OS X Server.

Postfix: The Definitive Guide seems to fit the bill. It is a well-written and well-constructed guide to mail systems in general and Postfix in particular.

The book starts with a good overview of the underlying technology in Chapters 1 and 2. I can't blame Dent for my slight confusion in the section on addresses and headers - having RFC822 superseded by RFC2822 was just a little too much coincidence for this particular "bear of little brain." He then follows it with a chapter discussing Postfix's architecture, important since Postfix uses a much more modular approach than the sendmail monolith, with each part of the mail handling process a different executable and the single queue turned into five.

Once the background is well covered, Dent then gets onto the nitty-gritty of configuring and administering Postfix. He has certainly covered everything I needed, including spam handling, multiple domains, relaying, SASL authentication and using LDAP. Once I'd finished grokking all that, and getting it integrated into my servers, I had a corporate email system up in three sites that replaced and improved upon a couple of thousand dollars worth of proprietary dreck. Happy is an understatement.

Dent's writing is sometimes a little patchy, though never bad. The technical detail does seem overpowering in places, though, and I occasionally found myself reading a section through more than once with a configuration file open in front of me. There are certainly spots where a little more hand holding and care with the writing would have been appreciated. (If you are a little more cognizant of the interstices of mail systems then you may not have the same problem.)

I did, however, appreciate the appendices enormously. The four appendices cover configuration parameters, Postfix commands, installation, and an FAQ. My system came with Postfix compiled and installed just as I required it so I didn't get a chance to thoroughly test out Dent's installation procedure (though it looks good); the other three continue to be useful.

If you want to have a look for yourself, then the usual O'Reilly page is complete with a table of contents and index, but this time no example chapter is provided (how come, O'Reilly?). You can also get an expanded version of the FAQ in Appendix 4 from Dent's website. A better example of Dent's writing style is an excellent article on troubleshooting with Postfix logs at O'Reilly's Onlamp.com.

This is a good book, Dent has explained the underlying methodology and use of Postfix well, taken the reader through all aspects of this MTA system and explained both the why and the how. I would recommend this book (and, as a result Postfix) to anyone looking for an MTA and a guide to configuring and running it.

Rating:
Summary: This is a great book.
Review: After over a month of trying to get my first email server up and running using the try a setting, see what happens method, I finally gave up and bought this book. Now I'm in business.

Everywhere I read, people claimed the easiest to configure MTA was postfix, so that is why I began to use it. True, the documention on the website is helpful and so are the included examples, but if you don't have the concepts down, that is useless.

Thats where this great book comes in. This book isn't just a paper copy of the online docs, unlike most other computer books. It explains what stuff is, does, and what it means. I can read the config file just fine, I just don't know what the settings do. For example, the online docs showed how to setup masquerading and examples, but never told me what that meant. From a newbie standpoint, the masquerade meant the same thing as an alias. Well, those words mean the same thing. I need the vocabulary from the book to help me understand. Conanical is a common work in computer land? Maybe in Silicon Valley but not in NJ.

A glowing chapter is DNS and e-mail which more than pays for the entire book. Not only to I understand DNS better, I can setup a backup mail system. Another great thing is the author shows you an entire setup zone file in one chunk, instead of line by line explanations and never showing you the whole thing put together. DNS and Bind book anyone? For shame.

Also, The Hosting Multiple Domains is a fantastic chapter.

Anyways, if you are lost and feeling like and idiot like I was, get this book. Thanks Mr. Dent for a fantastic book that is clear and easy to understand.

Rating:
Summary: The title of the book says it all.
Review: I have been trying to convert over to Postfix for the last few months using online documentation. Kyle Dent has done a GREAT job explaining all the aspects of how to configure Postfix and make Postfix do what you want. The examples in the book are just what I needed to understand the complex configurations I wanted to install. I was able to get maillist working, virtual domains, virus and spam testing all integrated with a MySQL backend. I am very happy with this book and would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone trying to get Postfix up and running.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely Definitive
Review: I remember folk on the Postfix mailing list complaining about how long it was taking for this book to be written. Well, I've been writing a computer book for the past year and all I can say is 'I feel your pain Kyle'. Anyway, the wait has been well worthwhile, and possibly a benefit because the book deals with several new features only recently added to Postfix.
You know that an O'Reilly book is at least going to be half-decent, and possibly excellent. In this case Mr. Dent's work has hit the mark spot on, and to my mind earns an excellent rating. Why ? Well, first of all his writing style is clear, concise and easy to read. Secondly he's covered everything you'd want to know about Postfix, rather than an easy feature subset. And third, he's avoided the common pitfall with software guide books where the writer simply presents a jazzed-up version of a reference guide---lists of configuration parameters and their explaination making up the bulk of the book.
Kyle takes the time, and it's much appreciated by the way, to explain how Postfix features work, why they exist (very important), and when they should be used (or not used). I was particularly overjoyed to see that he has covered the configuration of the server to support both SASL and TLS. I'm sure that those chapters will save me _days_ of hair pulling in crypto-hell.
In summary: If you already run Postfix, and you're not Wietse Venema (well, I'm sure he has a complimentary copy already), then RUN out and buy this book. If you don't run Postfix, but were thinking of changing to a better MTA, then consider your options again because now that this book exists, Postfix is a more attractive choice for many admins. Even if you don't ever plan to run Postfix, this book is a pretty good read for those who are just plain interested in e-mail technology.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I was expecting
Review: If you're looking for a comprehensive guide on setting up a Postfix mail server, then this isn't the book for you. For those that are already familiar with setting up MTAs, the information provided in "The Definitive Guide" is probably enough, but this book only covers a subset of the Postfix configuration parameters and does not provide the step-by-step instructions that many people may be expecting.

Rating:
Summary: The Only Serious Contender to Sendmail
Review: Over 20 years ago, Eric Allman wrote sendmail to handle the then tricky problems of email on BSD and SystemV unix machines. Since then, email has become all pervasive to educated persons. En route, sendmail also grew vastly in complexity to handle this. So much so that just manipulating its configuration files became convoluted. Worse yet was the actual debugging of its source code.

Despite all this, sendmail is still the most powerful Message Transfer Agent on unix/linux. But Venema recently tried a totally different approach. From the onset, he used a modular design and a set of 5 queues in which to process messages. In essence, we have a finite state machine, where the state of a message is the queue that it is in. Dent here shows how Postfix is fundamentally a queue management system. Analogous to how any operating system is basically a file management system.

The hope is that Postfix will be easier to maintain and debug. Certainly, from a sysadmin's viewpoint, the configuration files seem simpler than sendmail's. But perhaps this is partly because Postfix does not yet have the full capability of sendmail?

As a sign of the times we live in, Dent devotes 2 chapters to antispam measures possible in Postfix. This is equivalent functionality to sendmail's Milter API. Likewise, the current Postfix antispam implementations are no more effective than Milter's. Which leaves room for you to try your hand at improving this state of affairs!

As Dent describes, Postfix is now open source and easily available. Still not as widely installed as sendmail. But you now have a credible alternative to it.

Rating:
Summary: Postfix: The not very definitive guide
Review: Postfix: The Definitive Guide by Kyle D. Dent would be much better titled as Postfix: Cliffnotes. It is written hastily and many sections are left incomplete.

In many cases throughout the book I was left searching the web for answers to my questions on the web. The configuration file reference is nothing short of being deficient. I would estimate 50%-60% of the directives are left out completely, while existing directives contain less of a description than the comments in the configuration file.

If this book was not under the veil of "The Definitive Guide" series I might have been happier. Definitive is defined as "serving to provide a final solution or to end a situation", which is nothing less than I have obtained in prior books I have read in this series.

This book is well suited, and I recommend it, for the person who already has some Postfix or Sendmail experience. If you don't have this experience, plan to use this book as a complement to Google and the Postfix site.

Rating:
Summary: Not for the newbie
Review: This book is not for a Postfix or mail novice. It does explain many concepts in a proficient manner. It does explain more in depth strategies and configurations. However, if you are new to Postfix and expect it to get you up and running without having to troubleshoot through config files and find hints on the web first, you will be let down.