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Hello, Gentoo. |
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|
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Right at the moment, I feel a lot of sympathy with Alan Grimes, and need |
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a lot of restraint in avoiding the use of swear words in describing some |
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Gentoo developer. |
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|
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What has happened is that somebody decided to add virtual/mta-1 |
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surreptitiously to the default software set in Gentoo. This installs |
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something called nullmailer, which I don't need, didn't ask for, and |
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fouls up my mail transmission. |
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|
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nullmailer installs a file /usr/sbin/sendmail. This masks out the |
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correct /usr/bin/sendmail (which is a symbolic link to s/qmail, which I |
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installed by hand, not using emerge) because /usr/sbin is before |
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/usr/bin in $PATH. |
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|
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It appears that nullmailer was installed on 2018-06-15. |
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|
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Up until recently, things seemed to work; mutt seems to bind itself to |
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the sendmail it finds at (mutt's) installation time. However, |
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mutt-1.10.1 was released in the last couple of days. It bound itself to |
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the imposter sendmail. |
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|
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So, when I sent mail from mutt, nullmailer simply swallowed it up, |
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without forwarding it to its destination (nullmailer not being |
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configured). There were no signs of this lack of action anywhere to be |
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seen. |
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|
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SO, WATCH OUT, FELLOW GENTOOERS! |
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|
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The temporary solution was to rename /usr/sbin/sendmail, and to |
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reinstall mutt. That's how I'm able to send this mail. This has cost |
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me ~two hours of time, so far. |
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|
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But what's the proper method to tell my gentoo system that I don't want |
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crud like nullmailer installed? How can I guard myself against such |
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presumptiousness on the part of the Gentoo devs in the future? |
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|
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Is this worth a bug report? |
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|
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-- |
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Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). |
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