On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 08:36:01AM -0700, Paul E Condon wrote: > Even today an MTA is needed for hosts that have special uses. > Firewalls, etc. On these machines there are a bunch of daemon > processes, which can get into trouble, and need to be able to call for > help. On Debian, and likely othe distributions, this is done by > sending local email to root. The sysadmin is supposed to look at this > spool periodically. Without an automatic install of a MTA, this idea > would be already broken out of the box. Debian has choosen Exim/Exim4 > for this function in the base system. If you install some other MTA > or intend to rely on your MUA for MTA services, you may not be able > to remove the MTA that the distribution provided, unless you make > sure that your substitute is actually handling this 'hidden' email > traffic. There are daemons on your computer that may, some day, need > to talk to you.
Sorry, I was mostly referring to people running a Linux desktop. Most people in such a use-case nowadays, aren't operating their system as a server or old mainframe (which is the way most of these tools were designed). I use them all the time, but in a general sense (for desktop use) it's not used. The spool would just fill up with such messages and no one would be looking at them. -- Brandon Sandrowicz email: bsand...@gmail.com cell: +1 503 481 3865
