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On 2018-07-21 23:04, Grant Edwards wrote: |
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> Manually installing things in /usr/bin or /usr/sbin will often cause |
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> problems because Portage assumes that it controls those directories. |
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> |
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> So don't do that: you should manually install things in /usr/local. |
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> |
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> Or, install qmail using portage, so that the system knows you have an |
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> MTA. If you don't like the default qmail ebuild for some reason, you |
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> can use your own. |
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> |
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> Or, tell Portage you have an MTA by adding an appropriate line to |
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> /etc/portage/profie/package.provided. See portage(5). |
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> |
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> Or, don't use Gentoo if you don't want to do things the way Gentoo |
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> does things. |
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I agree than one should not normally install hand-compiled programs in |
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the normal directories controlled by portage. I can see how the case of |
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MTA can tempt someone into violating that rule, though: unlike most of |
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all other cases where a program is called by other programs, the path to |
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/usr/sbin/sendmail is usually hardcoded, and there is no well known |
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environment variable either (like EDITOR or PAGER). mutt has a runtime |
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configuration option for the MTA but that's unusual. |
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In fact, I myself am guilty of the corresponding sin on my Debian |
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server: I want to run the latest version of my pet MTA, exim, and with |
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the features I choose, so hand compiling is the only way. And this week |
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it backfired on me too: I carelessly installed some package that |
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depended on a MTA - and boom, /usr/sbin/sendmail, which had been a |
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symlink to /opt/exim/bin/exim, was overwritten by something like |
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nullmailer. |
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The /usr/sbin/sendmail convention is one of the parts of Unix that, |
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honestly, sucks. With repeated and prolonged exposure one can get |
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irritated enough to turn Poettering :-P |
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On Gentoo the best way is to make your own package from your favorite |
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MTA _and_ your own virtual/mta, and make both available in a local repo. |
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Recently I discovered dma[1] which IMHO is the _best_ lightweight MTA |
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for client machines, so now I have a Gentoo package for it. |
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[1] |
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https://github.com/corecode/dma/ |
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-- |
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Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet, |
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if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup. |
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To reply privately _only_ on Usenet and on broken lists |
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which rewrite From, fetch the TXT record for no-use.mooo.com. |
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