If you had a list of the words used to describe sendmail, they'd probably include reliable, flexible, configurable, complex, monolithic, and daunting. But you're not likely to find the word easy. Even seasoned sendmail pros are sometimes frustrated by the intricacies of sendmail's configuration files. With a little determination and the help of a good reference book, like sendmail, Third Edition, you can master this demanding program. But when there's a significant point release, like sendmail V8.13, where do you turn?An excellent companion to our popular sendmail, Third Edition, the sendmail 8.13 Companion provides a timely way to document the improvements in V8.13 in parallel with its release. The book highlights the important changes in the latest update to sendmail, pointing out not just what is handy or nice to have, but what's critical in getting the best behavior from sendmail. This is especially important now that spam is on the rise, and because mobile technology requires roving laptops to use encrypted connections.Not surprisingly, many of the changes and additions to V8.13 have been driven by the ongoing fight against spam. Anyone concerned about spam--and who isn't?--will benefit greatly by upgrading to V8.13 sendmail. Among its many enhancements, V8.13 includes new routines that support the SPF sending site authentication standard (in the Milter library), simultaneous connection control, high connection rate control, and finer tuning of SASL parameters. The additions to the Milter library, alone, make upgrading worthwhile, but sendmail's connection control makes it a no-brainer. The key to understanding them is the sendmail 8.13 Companion.The book is divided into twenty-five chapters that parallel the chapters in the third edition of the sendmail book. For instance, if you're interested in Options configuration (Chapter 24 in sendmail), you'll turn to Chapter 24 in your companion volume to find out what's new in V8.13.For a simple dot release (8.12 to 8.13), V8.13 sendmail has added more features, options, and fundamental changes than any other single dot release has included. If you need to set up or manage sendmail, you'll want this companion volume close at hand. Even if you aren't ready to upgrade to V8.13, you'll find the key to understanding them is the sendmail 8.13 Companion a useful guide to understanding and staying current with the latest changes in sendmail.
About the Author: Bryan Costales is CTO with SL3D, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado. He has been active in system administration for over fifteen years and has been writing articles and books about computer software for over twenty years. His most notable books are C from A to Z (Prentice Hall), Unix Communications (Howard Sams), and, of course, sendmail (O'Reilly & Associates).
George Jansen is a freelance writer who has worked with Bryan Costales on several of Bryan's books. His first novel, The Jesse James Scrapbook, is published by Hilliard & Harris. His second, The Fade-away, is published by Pocol Press. He lives in the Bay Area, drives a brand new Toyota Yaris, and enjoys baseball, classic jazz, and taking long naps.
Claus Assmann is a member of the Sendmail Consortium and works for Sendmail, Inc. He is the maintainer of sendmail 8 and currently implements a new MTA (message transfer agent) named MeTA1. His main interests in computer technology are security and performance. He studied computer science at the University of Kiel in Germany, where he received his Ph.D. in 1992.
Gregory Shapiro began his professional career as a systems administrator for Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) after graduating from the university in 1992. During his tenure as Senior Unix Systems Administrator, he became involved with beta testing the BIND name server, the sendmail mail transfer agent, and other Unix utilities such as emacs and screen. His involvement with sendmail grew until he became Principal Engineer at Sendmail, Inc., where he continued to support the open source version while working on Sendmail's commercial products. He later moved into the IT team as the Senior Unix Network Systems Administrator. He is now Director, Strategic Technology at Sendmail, Inc. He is also a FreeBSD committer and has served as program committee member for BSDCon 2002 and program chair for BSDCon 2003. Greg lives in California and enjoys reading science fiction and fantasy books, traveling, and seeing movies and theater productions.
