When I first picked this up I really didn't expect much. I expected that this would be a rather ordinary rehash of typical performance tuning advice. How much could you possibly have to say about sendmail specifically?
Boy, was I wrong. Nick Christensen has a lot to say about tuning mail systems. The attention to detail here is simply wonderful, and his clear writing style makes it enjoyable too.
You can learn a lot about sendmail here, but you'll also gain a deeper understanding of how complicated performance tuning really is; how seemingly unrelated factors can really affect performance. Nick covers it all- nothing left out, nothing glossed over.
If you are interested in sendmail, you'll want this book. If you are running any other Unix mail system you still will want it because much of the advice and discussion is relevant to other systems. In fact, f you are just interested in performance tuning on any system, this is a worthwhile read.
Eric Allman (the original author of sendmail) says "This book is great". Eric is wrong. This is much better than that. This is an impressive work, and I've enjoyed it thoroughly.
