Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 12, 2013 20:55 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Fedora keeps sendmail — for now by mjg59
Parent article: Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

If you set the Debian install to use your ISPs mail server as it's smarthost, then yes, you probably can send mail to arbitrary addresses on the Internet (at least, if you send them from an e-mail address your ISP assigned to you)

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 12, 2013 20:59 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (8 responses)

That would be an additional configuration step, so it doesn't answer my question.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 12, 2013 21:10 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (7 responses)

that configuration is done during the install, as others have pointed out.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 12, 2013 21:25 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (6 responses)

Having just performed a Debian install, I can assure you that it isn't.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 12, 2013 21:45 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

since you are saying that this has to work without any configuration step, I'm surious as to what MUA you are using that works without any configuration.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 12, 2013 21:48 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Sigh. No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that you can't depend on there being a system-wide MTA that can deliver to the outside world, and as such any software that's expected to run on arbitrary machines cannot rely on the sendmail command doing anything useful.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 12, 2013 21:48 UTC (Mon) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (3 responses)

if that's the case, it would only be because people like you have succeeded in having an MTA (the default used to be exim) excluded from the default install. and then to add insult to injury you triumphantly claim "look, it doesn't work, i told you so!".

if that's the case then i wouldn't have noticed because i always install postfix instead of exim. and i can assure you that when you do install an MTA in debian, it does indeed offer to create a basic configuration for you with about 4 or 5 options for you to choose from - one of which is "send all mail through a smarthost"

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 12, 2013 21:56 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Exim's still installed by default, it's just not configured to do remote delivery.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 13, 2013 8:48 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

But that still leaves you out in the cold if your ISP wants you to submit mail to port 587 with TLS and SMTP AUTH. You will need to configure that manually – in a manner that depends on your specific MTA – after the installation.

The fact remains that ISP mail setups are diverse enough that any method of getting mail off the local machine – via a local MTA or an MUA – requires configuration. Instead of debating whether a system should come with a full-blown MTA like Sendmail by default, it would arguably be more productive to come up with a standardised scheme of representing ISP mail setups such that a user could be asked »What is your e-mail address (and possibly submission password)?« and the system could figure out automatically, for a reasonable majority of common ISPs, how to configure the local MTA or MUA of the user's choice to actually send mail using whatever access method that ISP supports, including goodies like encryption if it is available.

Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

Posted Aug 13, 2013 10:02 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

i don't think that you would find anyone who is opposed to such a tool being created.

Just the work of identifying the different types of access, enumerating them, and maintaining a list of per-ISP configs would be of immense value.

then configuring MTA or MUA software from that data would be much easier.

and by the way, as long as the actual work of configuring the MTA/MUA was modular and scriptable, this would also fit into the "Unix way" quite nicely :-)