At 11:54 PM -0400 9/27/06, Barry Warsaw wrote:
Looking at Postfix, what other options are readily available? I suppose you could try to hook into the transport maps, but if I understand them correctly, you're still talking about forking a process per message.
Use LMTP instead. This will allow you to completely avoid an intermediate (and unnecessary) queue-to-disk stage.
Maybe LMTP to a daemon process is anotheroption, but there appears to be no documentation on www.postfix.org about LMTP.
Wietse didn't invent LMTP, he's just using the technique that was invented by others. Look in the sendmail source code, it includes an LDA that implements LMTP. For that matter, I think postfix also includes an LDA that implements LMTP.
LMTP is basically just exactly like SMTP, except that it's via the localhost interface only, and simplifies a number of other assumptions as well. So, if you've got code that can do SMTP, then you've already got code that can do LMTP.
Frankly, there's not much to LMTP, which I think is a large part of why you're not likely to see a great deal written about it within the sendmail and postfix codebases.
As for what's best for other MTAs, that's a good question. I think we'll always have to support delivery-to-program since that seems like it's the lowest common method. If there are delivery mechanisms that make more sense for specific MTAs, then I'm all for including them,
LMTP is probably the best and most native method for both sendmail and postfix. I can't speak for other MTAs.
but others who are morefamiliar with those mailer servers will have to help (read: donate code).
IIRC, sendmail has a Berkeley-style copyright, so the "donation" of code should not be an issue. Converting the code from C to Python, now that may be a bit more of a problem.
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