Sep
19
Postfix Saves the Day
Filed Under Administration, Fax Server, Linux, Projects, Work
At work we have a dedicated Fax Server using HylaFax and Sendmail running on Ubuntu Linux.
The goal of the Fax Server was a cheap (free, using an antiquated server) solution to implementing an eFax configuration for our company. The main function would be conversion between e-mail and fax, and vice-versa, allowing us to consolidate our fax machines and numbers.
Our setup is quite handy, in that we can send an internal e-mail to <phonenumber>@<faxserver> and it will automatically generate a corporate cover letter using your name/contact info, as well as information about who you are sending to, and send that along with your fax (and any PDF attachments).
The only problem we have been encountering is with Sendmail. From day one we have had nothing but problems. It has a horrible configuration that is overly complex and nothing quite seems to work like you would think.
We ended up cheating and installing Webmin to hack-job configure the Fax Server to work to our needs. While this worked initially, it was not an elegant solution, and had it’s quirks (such as settings being reset when the machine reboots, requiring reconfiguration).
Anyway, we ended up taking down the fax server to move it to a new location, which reset the configuration. As we had not messed with the configuration for over two months, we were a little lacking on remembering the exact details.
That being said, after nearly four hours of complaining and frustration we ultimately said screw it, uninstalled Sendmail, and installed Postfix.
I now highly recommend Postfix. That was the smoothest Linux application install I have ever had. It actually had a GUI-ish configuration (I don’t know how to describe that, text based, but with ASCII style graphics?), and asked a few simple questions and handled everything else.
In under 30 minutes, we had a new linux e-mail server up and running, and the Fax Server is now online and working properly. In addition, we actually have a clean install that can be rebooted!
sendmail sucks
yes. sendmail is up there on the top list of programs i hate. it sucks more becuase it’s so useful too.
*bows*
Thanks for trying to assist with Sendmail. As you suggested, I may give QMail a try one of these days. However, I have been very happy with Postfix so far.
don’t try qmail, it apparently sucks :p
After reading the rest of the post — the text based with ASCII graphics is called curses in the original BSD library that provided the functionality, and everything I’ve seen in Linux that does it uses the ncurses library.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ncurses
Ahh yes, I actually used Ncurses once to write a configuration front-end for a Linux firewall we used at an old job.
It was actually a lot of fun writing a parser for the .cfg files and having a clean ui for people to use.
I actually thought of name of what I was trying to think of (Ncurses) as I went to bed, but didn’t’ get around to updating the post. Sorry, but thanks for the info.