Sendmail still default?

[Les Mikesell]

Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le samedi 18 octobre 2008 à 12:03 -0500, Les Mikesell a écrit :
> 
>> And did anyone have an actual problem with sendmail other than noticing 
>> it taking time to start the daemon in the boot sequence.
> 
> I think each one of us who've replaced sendmail with something else has
> (despite years of RH/Fedora trying force sendmail through our throats).
> 
> Even back when postfix was just a powertools option people knew sendmail
> was a poor default.

Sendmail was a poor default back when it always ran everything as root 
and accepted and delivered in the same process.  Maybe you didn't notice 
that has changed or the enforced separation of the queuing and delivery 
steps.

> As an engineer who likes neat technical stuff and contributes to Fedora
> because it tends to produce neat technical stuff it makes me cringe each
> time I'm reminded we ship sendmail instead of something properly
> designed for an untrusted TCP/IP network world.

Ummm, when was the last time you saw a network exploit for sendmail?  As 
I recall, postfix has also had some local exploits and probably more 
recently than sendmail.

> You may extend years of hole-fixing and patch a sieve enough it sort of
> floats but it's still a poor excuse of a boat. Even if passengers only
> see the "it floats" bit.

You seem to have missed the sea change.  And the capabilities added by 
the milter interface that it took the other contenders many years to 
duplicate properly.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com