Sendmail still default?

Matthew Woehlke mw_triad at users.sourceforge.net
Sat Oct 18 00:07:15 UTC 2008


Lutz Lange wrote:
> i've just wondered why sendmail is still the default MTA in Fedora.
> Please enlighten me?

Some people (/me waves) were concerned about the element of surprise 
when someone configures a new system, throws some (user) cron jobs on 
it, and expects local mail delivery to Just Work.

I also suggested that setting up what happens to cron's mail in 
anaconda/firstboot would be an adequate solution. However it was too 
late to do this for F10.

What I'd be interested in for F11 is a screen during install that 
requires you to either provide a valid e-mail address recipient for 
root's mail and the default user's mail (with, I suppose, any other mail 
going to whatever is set up for root), or else explicitly requesting a 
local-mail capable MTA.

Um... which is actually another reason for local mail being default; in 
the event a user's mail recipient is not configured, it goes to a local 
spool only readable by root and that user. If Sue sets up a computer and 
adds an account for Bob, it's not really ideal if Bob's mail gets sent 
to sue at mydomain.com because Bob doesn't have a recipient specified. 
True, Sue probably has root access and could read Bob's mail if she 
wanted, but you've gone the extra step to tossing Bob's mail in Sue's 
inbox without warning.

-- 
Matthew
Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies.
-- 
When on POSIX, do as POSIX mandates.




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