I found this book easy to use and understand. It filled in a LOT of blanks and provided me with a much fermer understanding of how to setup postfix and the many ancillary programs it supports. Well done.

I own all the books on this subject that I know of -- the two others being Kyle Dent's book "Postfix: The Definitive Guide" (written with Wietse Venema and published by O'Reilly), and "Postfix" by Richard Blum.

Ralf is one of those kinds of guys that participates actively on various Postfix-related mailing lists, and widely shares his knowledge with anyone who needs help. And he has an excellent style of writing.

Normally, O'Reilly books are the definitive standard by which all other technical books are measured. In this case, while Kyle's book was co-written by the author of the software, I think that Ralf has the better book.

I found some gems in this book but I don't recommend it. The authors should learn to write in English and the Publisher should learn the art of copy editing. Otherwise, this book could have worked.

Whoever wrote Chapter 15 did a good job and wrote the best material in the book. But, he/she still didn't give the reader an clear understanding of SASL.

The authors attempted to tie everything together in Chapter 19 - A Company Mail Server. But, you literally cannot get it to work. I doubt anyone ever tested it. The LDAP setup is out of sequence and obliterates the directory. If you try to make this work - and I image people would buy this book for that reason alone - you might just wind up shaking your head in defeat.

In summary, I see some lousy writing, a serious lack of editing and a book with incorrect information. It's difficult to recommend.

I purchased and read The Book of Postfix because I'm always interested in learning something new. This certainly is one hell of a book!

I'm an Exim guy myself, and I swear by the magic that Exim lets me do with a piece of mail. Ralf Hildebrandt and Patrick Koetter have certainly done a fabulous job with their book, and they have managed to make me consider using Postfix on my next project. They concisely, clearly and very beautifully bring forward how to use Postfix in real-world situations. Clear diagrams illustrate every concept, and the book is packed full of tips & real-world configurations, including exporting users from a Microsoft Exchange server to use in a Postfix gateway.

I think the book is worth its price in chapter fifteen alone: Understanding SMTP Authentication carries the only decent documentation about Cyrus SASL I've ever had the pleasure to read. An invaluable resource for any LDAP guy as well!

All in all, a most pleasurable experience.

If you can only afford one book on Postfix, make it this one. I already had Postfix, the Definitive guide (which is a very good book). However, this book will take you beyond simply getting Postfix up and running.

I was able to get Postfix working with Amavisd-new to integrate virus scanning and SpamAssassin. Previously I had tried to do that using only the package documentation and what I could find online; I gave it up because I just couldn't spend any more time. Getting virus and spam filtering working (for me) justified the cost of the book.

In addition, I have been able to implement LDAP and several security measures using this book. Chapter 19, A Company Mail Server is invaluable; it took a little study time for me, but now I have a mail server I could not have achieved with my experience level without this book.

For whatever it is worth, when I started this project I had dial in service and implemented Postfix using dial in; so if you are still doing dialup, you can make a working server. Now I have broadband and the transition was painless.

My only previous experience was with Sendmail and MS Exchange. Using this book, you can implement Postfix securely. I was also able to integrate Courier Maildrop using this book, which gives me the further advantage of being able to write custom filters and impose quotas on a per user basis.

Any reasonably savvy user/administrator can create a secure and dependable mail server using only this book as a reference.

Nuff said! 5 stars - Definitely Recommended