We need a new subject- bug fixes

[Les Mikesell]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:

>>>> OpenOffice is the particular thing I had in mind, but I suspect 
>>>> there are others.  I'm not talking about additional packages - this 
>>>> is in reference to your comment about not deviating from upstream.
>>>
>>> Again probably licensing reasons.
>>
>> Licensing as in it is illegal to redistribute the upstream version, or 
>> licensing as in someone arbitrarily doesn't like or agree with the 
>> license?
> 
> Well defined package licensing guidelines for Fedora. Fedora includes 
> only Free and open source software. Fedora clearly advertises this fact.

Does that mean we can expect fedora to immediately stop removing the 
parts of OpenOffice that require java?

>> Documented as in 'man sendmail' where you expect to find documentation? 
> 
> It is documented directly within the configuration file.

In other words you have to already know where to look before you can 
find the change specific to the distribution.

>>  How can removing network access from a network mail transport not 
>> break functionality?
> 
> Sendmail is just a mail transfer agent. It can deliver mails both 
> locally as well for a network. In Fedora, it is configured to deliver 
> mail locally by default. You claimed that it is difficult to bring back 
> that functionality which is just not true.

It is difficult and inconsistent compared to enabling any other network 
service in the distribution.

>>  > What exactly are you suggesting?
>>
>> That the distribution sendmail configuration is handled entirely 
>> differently than all the other services that have 
>> distribution-specific and fairly systematic ways to activate them.  
>> It's not only different from upstream, it's different from every other 
>> fedora packaging modification in not moving the distro-specific 
>> changes under /etc/sysconfig and providing a config program to control 
>> it easily.
> 
> Check upstream defaults before claiming that there is a difference 
> again.

Which of the .mc files in the stock sendmail distribution do you 
consider to be the upstream default that you base this statement on?
I can't find a matching DaemonPortOptions line in any of them. Or is 
fedora not really supposed to be close to the developer's versions?

> /etc/sysconfig serves a entirely different purpose. It is there 
> to separate changes where the configuration is otherwise directly modify 
> the init script which would conflict with updates using rpm.

And how does that not apply here?  If I change this setting and 
otherwise unrelated changes happen to this file in a subsequent RPM 
update, what is supposed to happen?

> There is 
> no configuration program required to change this simple thing. For the
> record, these are steps to configure sendmail to connect to a external 
> network.
> 
>    1. Edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and either change the DAEMON_OPTIONS 
> line to also listen on network devices, or comment out this option 
> entirely using the dnl comment delimiter.
> 
>    2. Install the sendmail-cf package:
> 
>             yum install sendmail-cf
> 
>    3. Regenerate /etc/mail/sendmail.cf:
> 
>             make -C /etc/mail

And for consistency could you list the other programs that require 
anything like those steps to return them to their intended 
functionality? If nothing else you could at least admit that this is not 
the normal way to configure fedora network services.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com