[ale] [Fwd: Linux Weaknesses, Comments] (fwd)

[Greg Hankins]

Jon-Michael J. DeBona enscribed thusly:

> I'm not a member of ALE, but I s*bscribe to your mailing list.  I was
> just wondering if anyone had any comments on the following letter.
> Thanks.

> ________________________________________________________________________
> Jon-Michael J. DeBona
> Technical Support Representative         E-Mail:  jdebona at discom.net
> Discovery Communications, Inc.              WWW:  http://www.discom.net/
> 775 Franklin Rd., Suite 100               Voice:  (770) 425-5700 x102
> Marietta, GA 30067                          Fax:  (770) 425-1765
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                Discover a Whole New Internet at Discovery
>              Bringing People Together Through Communications
> 
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> Date: Wed, 20 Nov 96 11:33:38 -0500
> Subject: Linux Weaknesses, Comments
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> We have had a number of requested from customers for things that require some 
> special "setup" recently and that do not seem obvious with Linux.  We are in 
> a competitive market here in Atlanta and are looking at other OS's i.e. Sun 
> Solarus.  Here are some of the request.  (We are running 2.0.1 with Apache 
> and Qpopper.)  People are asking for long mial names like 
> firstname.lastname.company at theirdomain.com.  Our sendmail doesn't seem to 
> handle this.  Also may need virtual mail servers and maybe virtual WEB 
> servers.  Some of our subscribers are asking about secure servers, like 
> Netscape,  real audio and the list goes on.  I've been told to switch to the 
> Debian version and we may; but I think the kernel is the same.  Question is 
> will Linux hold up for the more specialized tasks as well all expand on 
> systems and grow up or will we all be switching to other OS's in the future?

	Most of what you are asking is all sendmail issues and is the
same whatever the flavor of unix is that you are using.

	The firstname.lastname.company issue is just an alias issue with
sendmail.  Real simple.  Administratively a pain in the cabbose cause
you've got to get complete up-to-date lists of these users, but installing
the aliases from such a list should be just a simple script.

	Virtual mailservers is a sendmail issue and yes sendmail does
handle this although it's not pretty.  Linux uses a stock sendmail.  The
"Bat Book" (the O'Reilly handbook on Sendmail) does NOT get into virtual
mail domains but you can handle it with some fancy footwork in the
sendmail.cf rule sets (get the latest sendmail and use the m4 files).
I also saw where someone had published the information on how to do
this with smail as well.  Since sendmail will do header rewriting
and smail does not, my choice is to go with sendmail for a task of this
nature.

	Virtual web servers are a snap with Linux and Apache.  I've got
numerous.  Getting them to work on Linux was one hell of a lot easier
than on Solaris (got some of those too).  You don't even want to THINK
about it on SunOS (into kernel patching :-) ).

	Secure web servers are also a snap.  Of the first half dozen or
so non-netscape secure web servers in the US, I had two of them, one
on Linux.  The other was on Solaris, and Linux definitely wins out.
I now have four secure web servers, all running Apache-SSL and three
of them are on Linux.

	Real audio is just a MIME type.  I'm getting ready to setup
that on the Web servers at Internet Security Systems now.

	All of the web servers we have at ISS are running on Linux.  That's
4 standard http servers (including two virtual servers at this site) plus
two secure web servers.  Our mailing list server and mail hub also runs Linux
and provides mail service for our entire company world wide...

> I know there are a lot of Linux fans out there, but I'd like to here from 
> some users that have switched and have good reasons why they did so.

> David W. Huffman                                     <david at discom.net>
> Discovery Communications, Inc.                           www.discom.net
> 775 Franklin Road  Suite 100                               770-425-5700 
> Marietta, GA 30067                                    Fax: 770-425-1765
> \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
> Discover a Whole New Internet at Discovery 
> Bringing People Together Through Communications

	Mike
-- 
 Michael H. Warfield    |  (770) 985-6132   |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
  (The Mad Wizard)      |  (770) 925-8248   |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
  NIC whois:  MHW9      |  An optimist believes we live in the best of all
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