sendmail 8.13 Companion

Rating:
Summary: Short book for experts
Review: This is a very short, but well written and organized book primarily intended for experts. It doesn't introduce sendmail, or provide complete overviews of the system. It covers topics specific to sendmail 8.13. I'm not quite sure why the didn't just come out with another version of the Sendmail book, but they didn't. What you get instead is this book which is a kind of addendum. Buy this book only in conjunction with the Sendmail book.

Rating:
Summary: Fighting spam
Review: This slim book documents the latest major release of sendmail. It assumes that you are already well familiar with running an earlier sendmail. The author does not waste your time going over generic properties of sendmail that have been true for years.

The book can be easily summarised as fighting spam. The key changes in 8.13 revolve around this topic. A tribute to the scourge that spam has become.

Perhaps the biggest change has been the enhancements to Milter, which allows filter plugins that are written by third parties (you?), often in C. Then when sendmail gets a message, it applies these filters (there can be several). By this means, you can incorporate any particular antispam methods to the mail. Earlier sendmail versions had Milter. But 8.13 has vastly expanded the scope.

Rating:
Summary: Companion is Worthless by Itself
Review: When they said "Companion," they didn't mean Companion for Sendmail version 8.13; they ment Companion for "Sendmail, 3rd edition." This book only covers the updates between 8.12 and 8.13. If you don't know what 8.12 does in the first place, you need to get "Sendmail, 3rd edition" in addition to this one. Other than that, it's a great book.