Postfix: The Definitive Guide

Author Kyle D. Dent
Copyright 2003
Publisher O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Book URL click here
ISBN 0-596-00212-2
Reviewer Stephen L. Martin
Review Date July 11, 2004

Postfix: The Definitive Guide by Kyle D. Dent would be much better titled as "Postfix: Cliffnotes." It is written hastily and many sections are left incomplete.

In many cases throughout the book I was left searching the web for answers to my questions on the web. The configuration file reference is nothing short of being deficient. I would estimate 50%-60% of the directives are left out completely, while existing directives contain less of a description than the comments in the configuration file.

If this book was not under the veil of "The Definitive Guide" series I might have been happier. Definitive is defined as "serving to provide a final solution or to end a situation", which is nothing less than I have obtained in prior books I have read in this series.

This book is well suited, and I recommend it, for the person who already has some Postfix or Sendmail experience. If you don't have this experience, plan to use this book as a complement to Google and the Postfix site.


About the reviewer:

Stephen Martin works as a Systems Administrator and independent contracter in Charlottesville, VA. At the present time he mainly enjoys working with FreeBSD, firewalls and perl.