Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Adam Heath]

On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Brian M. Carlson wrote:

> Great! I'm glad you know about it. In fact, I'm elated. Now that you
> know, please do something about it. I know you have many machines running
> exim, and I've heard from others that you also run postfix on some
> machines. I really don't care what mail-transport-agent Debian uses on
> murphy, as long as its free. In fact, "apt-cache showpkg
> mail-transport-agent" lists 13 available packages in sid main or non-US.

What does the mail-transport-agent have to do with it?

There is no need to repeat the reasons why to my question above.  You can
search for them yourself.

Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Brian M. Carlson]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 06:44:11AM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 04:31:27AM +, Brian M. Carlson wrote:
> > > > The subject says it all. qmail is installed on murphy.debian.org.
> > > 
> > > The first thing that pops into my mind as to how to answer this bug report
> > > is... "no shit." :)
> > > 
> > > We know. We have known for years. Filing a serious bug on the project
> > > pseudo-package doesn't help us much.
> > 
> > Great! I'm glad you know about it. In fact, I'm elated. Now that you
> > know, please do something about it. I know you have many machines running
> > exim, and I've heard from others that you also run postfix on some
> > machines. I really don't care what mail-transport-agent Debian uses on
> > murphy, as long as its free. In fact, "apt-cache showpkg
> > mail-transport-agent" lists 13 available packages in sid main or non-US.
> 
> Yeah, but none have been tested and proven to work on lists.debian.org.
> That's the catch. See the e-mail related graphs at
> http://murphy.debian.org/mrtg/ for a quick indication why this is so.

None of them will be tested and proven to work if you don't try them.
Alternatively, you could pester upstream rather heavily and see if he'd
make qmail free. I've seen the copyright file for qmail-src, and your
chances of doing so look good.

In addition, no matter how good, reliable, efficient, or otherwise
beneficial qmail is, it's still not right for Debian to use it while it
is in non-free.
 
> BTW, the correct pseudo-package is called "lists.debian.org".

lists.debian.org runs on master, not murphy, although I will admit that
list mail does run through it. Although I filed this on project partly
because project is "Problems related to Project administration",
according to reportbug.

-- 
Brian M. Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  0x560553E7
Thufir's a Harkonnen now.


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Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Brian M. Carlson]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 11:50:39PM -0500, Adam Heath wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Brian M. Carlson wrote:
> 
> > Great! I'm glad you know about it. In fact, I'm elated. Now that you
> > know, please do something about it. I know you have many machines running
> > exim, and I've heard from others that you also run postfix on some
> > machines. I really don't care what mail-transport-agent Debian uses on
> > murphy, as long as its free. In fact, "apt-cache showpkg
> > mail-transport-agent" lists 13 available packages in sid main or non-US.
> 
> What does the mail-transport-agent have to do with it?

I don't understand what you're asking. Well, maybe I do, but please,
explain further.
 
> There is no need to repeat the reasons why to my question above.  You can
> search for them yourself.

-- 
Brian M. Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  0x560553E7
The young lady had an unusual list,
Linked in part to a structural weakness.
She set no preconditions.


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Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 02:28:11PM +, Brian M. Carlson wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 06:44:11AM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 04:31:27AM +, Brian M. Carlson wrote:
> > > > > The subject says it all. qmail is installed on murphy.debian.org.
> > > > 
> > > > The first thing that pops into my mind as to how to answer this bug 
> > > > report
> > > > is... "no shit." :)
> > > > 
> > > > We know. We have known for years. Filing a serious bug on the project
> > > > pseudo-package doesn't help us much.
> > > 
> > > Great! I'm glad you know about it. In fact, I'm elated. Now that you
> > > know, please do something about it. I know you have many machines running
> > > exim, and I've heard from others that you also run postfix on some
> > > machines. I really don't care what mail-transport-agent Debian uses on
> > > murphy, as long as its free. In fact, "apt-cache showpkg
> > > mail-transport-agent" lists 13 available packages in sid main or non-US.
> > 
> > Yeah, but none have been tested and proven to work on lists.debian.org.
> > That's the catch. See the e-mail related graphs at
> > http://murphy.debian.org/mrtg/ for a quick indication why this is so.
> 
> None of them will be tested and proven to work if you don't try them.

We have.  Our listmasters are quite thorough.  We have an exceedingly
customized list software installation, with spam filtering and
impressively resilient bounce handling; moving away from it would
cripple the machine.

I'll leave more details for our listmasters to share, if they want to. 
I have confidence in their judgement, and the problem IS being looked
at as the responsible individuals can find time.

> Alternatively, you could pester upstream rather heavily and see if he'd
> make qmail free. I've seen the copyright file for qmail-src, and your
> chances of doing so look good.

You've obviously never dealt with the man.

> In addition, no matter how good, reliable, efficient, or otherwise
> beneficial qmail is, it's still not right for Debian to use it while it
> is in non-free.

It is also not right for us to disrupt our list services.  Every time
this argument has come up, there has been a consensus that we need to
switch - but a refusal to do so without a viable list solution.  Look
at the graphs; the mail volume is impressive, and we still have just a
few minutes turnaround time on all our lists.  We don't want to let
that go; the project as a whole would suffer.

> > BTW, the correct pseudo-package is called "lists.debian.org".
> 
> lists.debian.org runs on master, not murphy, although I will admit that
> list mail does run through it. Although I filed this on project partly
> because project is "Problems related to Project administration",
> according to reportbug.

What are you talking about?  lists.debian.org _IS_ murphy.  I suggest
you investigate the facts before making a suggestion like this.

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~% mx lists.debian.org
lists.debian.orgMX  0 murphy.debian.org

The others are only queuing backups, in case murphy is unreachable.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer

Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Oohara Yuuma]

On Wed, 28 Aug 2002 02:47:34 +,
"Brian M. Carlson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 08:15:56AM +0900, Oohara Yuuma wrote:
> > On Tue, 27 Aug 2002 20:00:10 +,
> > "Brian M. Carlson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Debian should not be using non-free software on its own
> > > systems.
> > Debian Project is not FSF.
> The Debian Project is not the Free Software Foundation, I agree. But they
> both stand for Free Software. If Debian uses non-free software, it looks
> like it is just paying lip service to the Social Contract. "We want to
> make a free Unix, but we don't want to use it."
I don't think Debian must avoid non-free software at any cost,
but I agree that free software is better than non-free software,
so if the sysadmin wants to spend hours or days to replace qmail
with some free MTA, I don't care.

> > > "Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software"
> > I think this Debian means the Debian distribution, not a specific
> > Debian machine.
> Perhaps it could be interpreted that way. The word "Debian" alone is
> somewhat ambiguous. English tends to have that quality.
I really want to see the definition of "Debian" and "Software" here.

-- 
Oohara Yuuma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Debian developer
PGP key (key ID F464A695) http://www.interq.or.jp/libra/oohara/pub-key.txt
Key fingerprint = 6142 8D07 9C5B 159B C170  1F4A 40D6 F42E F464 A695

Better just encrypt it all in your head :-).
--- Derrick 'dman' Hudson, about encryption without any physical medium

Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Branden Robinson]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 10:47:27AM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> I'll leave more details for our listmasters to share, if they want to. 
> I have confidence in their judgement, and the problem IS being looked
> at as the responsible individuals can find time.

I'd like to ask that someone *please* share details.  Are there
qmailisms in our mailman setup?  How about the VERP configuration?

IMO one of the most useful things that could be done would be for some
volunteer to set up a guinea pig system running, say, postfix, with an
eye to duplicating as much of murphy's configuration as possible.  The
real listmasters could then eyeball this and make suggestions for
changes.

Perhaps if this guinea pig host were configured to deliver to a special
relay that would blackhole all the mail, we could even run the systems
in parallel for a while.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson|
Debian GNU/Linux   |   // // //  / /
[EMAIL PROTECTED] |   EI 'AANIIGOO 'AHOOT'E
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |


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Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 12:24:26PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 10:47:27AM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> > I'll leave more details for our listmasters to share, if they want to. 
> > I have confidence in their judgement, and the problem IS being looked
> > at as the responsible individuals can find time.
> 
> I'd like to ask that someone *please* share details.  Are there
> qmailisms in our mailman setup?  How about the VERP configuration?

We don't run mailman.  We run smartlist, which is already a
qmail-specific package; then the VERP handling was built on top of it,
and it's all pretty much irretrievably wedded to qmail at this point.

That's my understanding at least.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer

Deine Freunde

[Martin Steeger]

Hi, haben uns gestern im Chat leider 
verloren :( Wollte dir doch noch meine Homepage-URL geben. Die Adresse ist: http://squeezer.5xx.netHoffe, du besuchst 
die Seite mal.. :) Schreibst du mir zurück? 
 
Küsschen :-)

Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Josip Rodin]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 01:38:41PM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> > > I'll leave more details for our listmasters to share, if they want to. 
> > > I have confidence in their judgement, and the problem IS being looked
> > > at as the responsible individuals can find time.
> > 
> > I'd like to ask that someone *please* share details.  Are there
> > qmailisms in our mailman setup?  How about the VERP configuration?
> 
> We don't run mailman.  We run smartlist, which is already a
> qmail-specific package; then the VERP handling was built on top of it,
> and it's all pretty much irretrievably wedded to qmail at this point.

IIRC ezmlm would be the qmail-specific one, not smartlist.

Although, out copy of smartlist on murphy is probably very well fitted into
qmail, enough to make it a pain to convert.

-- 
 2. That which causes joy or happiness.

Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 08:37:52PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 01:38:41PM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> > > > I'll leave more details for our listmasters to share, if they want to. 
> > > > I have confidence in their judgement, and the problem IS being looked
> > > > at as the responsible individuals can find time.
> > > 
> > > I'd like to ask that someone *please* share details.  Are there
> > > qmailisms in our mailman setup?  How about the VERP configuration?
> > 
> > We don't run mailman.  We run smartlist, which is already a
> > qmail-specific package; then the VERP handling was built on top of it,
> > and it's all pretty much irretrievably wedded to qmail at this point.
> 
> IIRC ezmlm would be the qmail-specific one, not smartlist.
> 
> Although, out copy of smartlist on murphy is probably very well fitted into
> qmail, enough to make it a pain to convert.

I stand corrected; I think that's right.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer

Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Tollef Fog Heen]

* Daniel Jacobowitz 

| On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 12:24:26PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
| > On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 10:47:27AM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
| > > I'll leave more details for our listmasters to share, if they want to. 
| > > I have confidence in their judgement, and the problem IS being looked
| > > at as the responsible individuals can find time.
| > 
| > I'd like to ask that someone *please* share details.  Are there
| > qmailisms in our mailman setup?  How about the VERP configuration?
| 
| We don't run mailman.  We run smartlist, which is already a
| qmail-specific package; then the VERP handling was built on top of it,
| and it's all pretty much irretrievably wedded to qmail at this point.

FWIW, Mailman 2.1 will be able to VERP properly.  MM is used on other
small installations like sf.net, python.org and apple.com, so I
think it should be able to scale. 

(No, I am not saying: switch! switch!.  Those which runs lists.d.o
have my greatest thanks for providing such a good service, though it
would be nicer if it ran on DFSG software, I am not going to tell them
how to do their job.)

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen, mailman maintainer,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are  : :' :
  `. `' 
`-  

Re: Bug#158533: project: qmail is installed on murphy

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On 29 Aug 2002, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:

> FWIW, Mailman 2.1 will be able to VERP properly.  MM is used on other
> small installations like sf.net, python.org and apple.com, so I
> think it should be able to scale. 

Yes, and for a good long time sf.net at least was not larger than us and
had about 1/10th the performance (I'm not kidding!) They have since got
better, but I'm not sure if it was  a software tweak or they tossed more
hardware at it.

The fact that after 3 years Mailman still doesn't have VERP really makes
it sound like the authors aren't doing stuff with big systems. VERP is
__absolutely__ necessary. Any site that can get by without it is either
very young or backed by alot of $$ hardware.

Anyhow, maybe mailman 2.1 will be the magic ticket for us, I'm not sure..

Jason