| 1 |
On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 10:30:06AM -0500, Grant Goodyear wrote: |
| 2 |
> > While we're in the area, can we also make the initial install not install |
| 3 |
> > the ssmtp package witout giving the user a choice? |
| 4 |
> |
| 5 |
> There is a choice, of course, it's just not documented very well. The |
| 6 |
> ssmtp package is not part of the system profile, it's brought in when a |
| 7 |
> user emerges one of the cron packages, which all have a virtual/mta |
| 8 |
> RDEPEND, without already having merged an mta. Perhaps in 10.b of the |
| 9 |
> handbook we should have: |
| 10 |
> |
| 11 |
> <warn> |
| 12 |
> Cron daemons report job output to the user by sending the user |
| 13 |
> an e-mail. Consequently, the Gentoo cron packages have a mail |
| 14 |
> transfer agent (MTA) as a run-time dependency. If you are going |
| 15 |
> to want a full-featured MTA (such as <i>postfix</i>, <i>qmail</i>, |
| 16 |
> <i>exim</i>, or <i>sendmail</i>) instead of the minimal default |
| 17 |
> (<i>ssmtp</i>), then you might want to consider emerging your |
| 18 |
> desired MTA before emerging a cron package. |
| 19 |
> </warn> |
| 20 |
|
| 21 |
I'd go farther than that. I'd add another section to the handbook, |
| 22 |
discussing the fact that nearly all systems will have an MTA of some sort, |
| 23 |
and recommending that one be selected and emerged - and noting that if they |
| 24 |
will be installing a cron daemon, they MUST pick one and install it. If they |
| 25 |
don't intend to use the system as a full-fledged mail sender, ssmtp will do |
| 26 |
the trick, but if they do, they'll need to pick one of the full-featured |
| 27 |
ones. I'd also suggest that the doc recommend one if the user has no |
| 28 |
preference, and my recommendation for that would be Postfix, since it's |
| 29 |
fairly easy and straightforward to configure. (sendmail is a major |
| 30 |
nightmare, and I don't recommend anyone use anything that that litigious |
| 31 |
bastard Bernstein has had anything to do with; I have no experience with |
| 32 |
exim, though.) |
| 33 |
|
| 34 |
> That said, if all MTAs had mailwrapper support then our users would be |
| 35 |
> able to install their full-fledged MTA even after ssmtp was installed, |
| 36 |
> and then all that would be required to switch would be to edit (or |
| 37 |
> replace) /etc/mailer.conf. (Even so, I still think we should document |
| 38 |
> the fact that cron pulls in an MTA, since it does seem to surprise so |
| 39 |
> many people.) |
| 40 |
|
| 41 |
Yes, mailwrapper would make this a lot simpler. Even with it in place, |
| 42 |
though, I'd still recommend the separate section on MTA installation. |
| 43 |
|
| 44 |
-- |
| 45 |
gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |
Archives