OS X Server wishlist: authenticated SMTP

[at_sym]

The mail server that ships with OS X Server is pretty substandard. Even with all the anti-spam options turned on, it's still an open relay. If Apple added ASMTP (authenticated SMTP) or POP before SMTP, it would make it a lot easier for novice sysadmins to ensure their servers aren't being used as spam relays.

[plazman30]

The SMTP server that ships with OS X server is sendmail, I believe. If that is the case, all this stuff is available if you learn sendmail and manually edit the configuration files.

Learning a little UNIX can go a long way towards making OS X more secure! :D

[at_sym]

The server includes sendmail (as does the regular version of OS X), but the default mail server is a home-grown solution. You can set up the server to use sendmail and configure it by hand, but that's not the point.

Apple's whole pitch for the server is that it's UNIX power with Mac OS ease of use. Have you read the OS X Server pages? "Best of all, you don't need to edit text configuration files to use any of the core services." "Apple thinks you have better things to do with your time than memorize arcane commands to get and keep things running."

So while it may be personally rewarding to tell people "just learn UNIX," that's just not an answer Apple can give. Especially not when people are paying a premium so that they can control freely available programs using a Mac GUI. IT's in Apple's best financial interest to add ASMTP and put a GUI frontend on all sendmail's options.

Just my 2.5 cents.

[plazman30]

God! If they could put a GUI front end on top of the God-awful Sendmail config files, I think the world would be a MUCH BETTER place. :D

[at_sym]

You said it, brotha! :D I've submitted that suggestion to Apple. Hopefully, someday, we'll have it.

[at_sym]

Well, for what it's worth, it looks like Apple knows about this problem:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106681