[NCLUG] New School Servers

[Michael Dwyer]

> I'm wondering what experiences NCLUGgers have with other less common
servers.
> What works best? What's fastest? What's most secure? What other crazy
servers
> are out there?

Honestly, I still run a pretty vanilla setup.  But there are certainly
some other options that interest me.  Mostly, I long for simpler
services -- KISS -- keep it simple stupid.

Mail:
  QMail is /powerful/.  But anyone who tells you that it is easy to
configure and use might be on crack.  (My opinion.)  I've always used
sendmail because it always just kind of worked right out of the box for
me, so to speak. The config file is unreadable, but somehow usable.  I'm
a big fan of securing it with Juniper smtpd, though.  I just wish
someone (maybe me?) would expand smtpd into a full sendmail lite.  There
just doesn't seem to be a small KISS mta out there...  MTAs would be
significantly clearer if they only had to deal with username at domain
addresses.  But sendmail still deals with bang-paths and everything
else.  <shrug> I dunno...

FTP:
  The guy who did QMail apparently did an FTP server called publicfile
(I think) which qualifies as a KISS FTPd in my book.  From what I have
read about it, it seems like the perfect FTPd if you are looking for its
particular mix of security and power.  I'd try that out a little bit if
I used FTP much anymore...  Otherwise, I just use wuftpd -- again, it
comes in the box, so to speak.

WEB:
  Apache.  With PHP.  What else is there? :)  I'm interested in the
kernel web server work going on, though.  That could make static page
serving viciously fast...

DNS:
  Once again, the Qmail guy has his DNS server, but I'm afraid I'm not
convinced.  I think this is another opportunity to build a KISS
service -- only does INET addresses (what is with support for CHAOS and
HESSIOD or whatever?  Lose those!)

So yeah... I'd love it if somebody paid me to build some lightweight
services.  I think they would really come in handy.  In the mean time,
I'm a pretty boring person when it comes to services.  I usually stick
with what works...