Hrm... Maybe its time I joined debian-policy... Johnie never said there'd
be days like this ;-}
First, I guess I should mention that I'm new to Debian - I'm mostly an IBM
mainframe assembler guy for 16+ years (call be Bob, but don't give me
COBOL). My temperment seems to run along the same stream as some of the
(more experienced) sendmail users I've heard from ;-} Oh, I'm definetly
no sendmail guru - I use it and enjoy learning - thats why I picked it up.
The point being that I'm comming into the fray rather late in the
game, which is both good and bad.
I wasn't here for the problems that led to sensible-mda, but can easily
understand the problems with a rich distribution wherein the MTA and MDA
aren't closely coupled. And as far as I know, sendmail seems to be the
only MTA so unencumbered (or flexible to be a bit more polite).
I'm going to attempt to summarize (not so briefly) my understanding of the
current state... Feel free to correct my assumptions and conclusions -
I'm not married to any particular approach and any information will help
me understand my clients.
sensible-mda has been updated to solve one incarnation of 23000:
* Both deliver and procmail are installed
* procmail is non-functionally-good as an MDA (by virtue of not being
suid)
* deliver is the preferred MDA (because of the above bullet)
This, however, doesn't address the case wherein both MDA are installed and
suitable for sendmail's use ... and yet deliver is to be preferred. The
only way to solve this is to change sendmail.mc.
Prior to sensible-mda (as I have inferred from its presence and comments
on this thread). The state was:
* sendmail would have to co-req a specific MDA (deliver or procmail)
* to change the MDA, one would have to
- install the desired MDA
- tweek sendmail.mc
- reload sendmail
- remove the old MDA (optionally)
With sensible-mda,
* sendmail co-req either MDA
* whichever one is installed is automagically used
* IFF both are extant, procmail is preferred
* to change from deliver to procmail, one needs to
- install the new MDA
- remove the old MDA (optionally)
* to change from procmail to deliver, one needs to
- follow the steps delineated in the prior to sensible-mda bullet
above
I'd have to conclude that sensible-mda (whilst most certainly a kluge)
certainly doesn't hurt things anymore than they already are... and does
do the right thing in most cases.
Clint: what was the prior "perfectly good mechanism"? How did it differ
from sensible-mda?
Can we complete protect the user from changing MDAs without informing the
MTA? I don't yet know how... But am most willing to help if I can...
Education would seem our first line of attack here, but when one targets
both the hobbiest and the "olde pharts" - it can be a difficult task to
have level appropriate material.
What tack do we take?
Regards, and sorry for rambling ;-}
--
Rick Nelson
On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Clint Adams wrote:
> > the option of easily using deliver instead of procmail might well be
> > appreciated by people other than Herbet Xu. If you have a chance it would
> > be a
> > nice addition to the sendmail configuration scripts.
>
> There was a perfectly good mechanism for this before. It seems that
> in the interest of idiot-proofing sendmail, sensible-mda is doing
> more harm than good. It should be retired.
>
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