Firewall Wizards mailing list archives

Re: FWTK and smap/smapd


From: ark () eltex ru
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 15:57:06 +0400

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Bennett Todd <bet () rahul net> said :

2002-07-16-08:50:40 Behm, Jeffrey L.:
Is the Firewall Toolkit still a viable solution nowadays?

Select components, perhaps, but the restrictive license has kinda
stifled it, other alternatives have probably taken over most if not
all of the fwtk functionality with better-maintained code.

At least as an email gateway with smap/smapd-type functionality?

That'd be a big Nope, no way, no sir. Postfix or qmail.

(1) smap/smapd don't have a perfect security track record. qmail and
    Postfix do.

Were there any problems with _fwtk_ smap/smapd? 
 
(2) Unlike modern, well-maintained MTAs, smap/smapd don't have
    powerful anti-relay and anti-spammer controls.

They do. See patches page on fwtk.org
 
(3) smap/smapd still need a sendmail (or something that tastes like
    one) to do the actual email routing and header thagomizing and
    whatnot; you _don't_ want sendmail on your firewall, lest some
    data-bourne bug be found that smap doesn't know to filter out.
    So you need a better MTA anyway. As long as you're gonna get
    one, go for one that's more secure than smap/smapd and toss them
    entirely.

You may run any simple mta that does mimick sendmail good enough.
 
(4) smap/smapd are _SLOW_. Orders of magnitude slower than sendmail.
    Postfix and qmail are _FAST_ --- many times faster than
    sendmail.

qmail is _not_ fast. and the smap slowness is caused mostly by queue rescan delay
which you can tune.
 
(5) smap/smapd adds complexity to a mail server. Sendmail+smap/smapd
    is about as complex as you can get. Either qmail or Postfix is
    far, far simpler than sendmail alone, let alone
    sendmail+smap/smapd. Simple is good. It works better.

Not too much. I'd say that smap/smapd+_really_simple smtp-only mta is simplier
than any full-blown mta like postfix. And it is more flexible. Store-and-forward
is good approach.


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