Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 11, 2013 12:54 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: Fedora keeps sendmail — for now by cas
Parent article: Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

> then don't. there's - slight exaggeration - a million ways for you to address your special needs that don't involve crippling distros by default.
"Special needs"???

I bet that at least 90% of users have to use some form of authenticated submission to send mail these days.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 11, 2013 13:11 UTC (Sun) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (7 responses)

yes, special need. his special need is that he wants to authenticate with his work server without, for some reason, involving an MTA.

as i said, there are many ways of achieving that.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 11, 2013 13:13 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (6 responses)

> yes, special need. his special need is that he wants to authenticate with his work server without, for some reason, involving an MTA.
"Some reason" is "no world-readable passwords in plaintext".

I'd argue that anybody who keeps passwords on laptops unencrypted should have their head examined.

> as i said, there are many ways of achieving that.
And they are...?

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 11, 2013 14:09 UTC (Sun) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (5 responses)

> "Some reason" is "no world-readable passwords in plaintext".
> I'd argue that anybody who keeps passwords on laptops unencrypted
> should have their head examined.

right, because storing your credentials in your thunderbird or other MUA config or in ~/.muttrc or .fetchmailrc is so much more secure than storing them in a system config file readable only by root.

hint: they're all insecure if the laptop is lost or stolen. also, $user-readable credentials are slightly more insecure if someone has a few minutes access to the laptop.

you know what is (relatively) secure? using a local MTA and configuring it to use a certificate issued by your work to authenticate with your work server. even if your laptop is stolen, your login and password are not leaked and the certificate can be revoked.

even tunneling smtp to $work_server over ssh is more secure than storing your credentials on a laptop.

> > as i said, there are many ways of achieving that.
> And they are...?

here, let me google that for you. answering trivial FAQs for you is my entire purpose in life. i'll get back to you with a complete report as soon as i have nothing more important to do.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 11, 2013 14:41 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> right, because storing your credentials in your thunderbird or other MUA config or in ~/.muttrc or .fetchmailrc is so much more secure than storing them in a system config file readable only by root.
Yes, they ARE more secure. Because they use a keychain which can be unlocked only by my password which I have to enter each time I resume my computer from sleep.

Besides, my /home/username directory is also encrypted by ecryptfs.

And neither of your solutions is actually implemented by the majority of mail relays out there.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 15, 2013 13:50 UTC (Thu) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (3 responses)

>here, let me google that for you. answering trivial FAQs for you is my entire purpose in life. i'll get back to you with a complete report as soon as i have nothing more important to do.

Except apparently ranting insanely about how your absurdly inconsequential use case should be the default inflicted upon millions of people, who would both need to spend the time reconfiguring their system to a semblance of sanity, assuming they somehow *know* that their system was configured by a selfish lunatic by default.

Christ, what an asshole.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 17, 2013 8:01 UTC (Sat) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (2 responses)

actually, it's you that's the arsehole.

and an ignorant fuckwit, too.

Enough

Posted Aug 17, 2013 13:05 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

Please... It's starting to feel like an elementary school playground here. Could I ask everyone to relax a bit and hold off on the personal attacks?

Enough

Posted Aug 17, 2013 15:38 UTC (Sat) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link]

sure, but that's "attack" (singular) followed by retaliation - self defense is not an attack.