From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 27 09:32:16 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2AD66106566B for ; Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:32:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bf1783@googlemail.com) Received: from ey-out-2122.google.com (ey-out-2122.google.com [74.125.78.27]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B9CF38FC18 for ; Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:32:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: by ey-out-2122.google.com with SMTP id 9so2645335eyd.9 for ; Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:32:14 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlemail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:date:message-id:subject :from:to:cc:content-type; bh=Y9/mGuK5NHDiCViD2kNdlqSuOZ9gwwUNmbmr2GBf6yM=; b=JV39HLaG7u4du3kZQ7w6OfoW2dvJkkUbu9ks165mde+UqCki5Pa7bQ1/HKMgyv0HqW 6Ms5C2TftAZhiGAgLxMNU8ZJXPd7DuT0GBVde0YA/ziLZ5ubuEwl6STPxyf0htUwbciD G1KKYJ1/gRY79c0GGotgmoAghMMMSKvlMTOYU= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlemail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:cc:content-type; b=vrRG2Y54SyCx+ehpUBLBRTmq2x/w330HV0kgk8xOcLSWbJhv6BUxLE71N8B3/EvKUA e8l/S7W0g1HbWkinqa2UeI7peX6urGvcPD6/M5p/Oq9zdOm8n7AA8kfpaApivWb3PA4x BHDwzOZr/MKMc/nD7B2o+Pqxm8V6R2RyCUPvc= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.216.90.196 with SMTP id e46mr705956wef.194.1256635934821; Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:32:14 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:32:14 +0000 Message-ID: From: "b. f." To: Yuri Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Why is sendmail is part of the system and not a package? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:32:16 -0000 >It's in /usr/sbin/sendmail. > >How many people actually use it? Very few. >Why isn't it moved to ports? Obviously, not everyone wants or needs sendmail in the base system. But quite a few people do use it, and many FreeBSD developers are happy with the status quo, so it is unlikely that sendmail will be removed soon. But there's nothing to prevent you from disabling it in rc.conf(5): sendmail_enable="NONE" and replacing it's administrative use with local logs in periodic.conf(5), by adding, for example: daily_output="/var/log/daily.log" daily_clean_hoststat_enable="NO" daily_status_mailq_enable="NO" daily_status_include_submit_mailq="NO" daily_status_mail_rejects_enable="NO" daily_queuerun_enable="NO" daily_submit_queuerun="NO" daily_status_security_output="/var/log/daily.log" weekly_output="/var/log/weekly.log" monthly_output="/var/log/monthly.log" . (Or you can use another MTA instead.) You can also go one step farther: if you have the system sources available, you can rip sendmail out of the base system and avoid building and installing it again by using either WITHOUT_SENDMAIL=yes or WITHOUT_MAIL=yes in src.conf(5), then running 'make delete-old' and 'make delete-old-libs' in /usr/src, and finally removing any leftover associated files by hand. (find(1) can be used with the appropriate flags to check for stale files or empty directories in the base system directories immediately after a fresh install in order to help locate such leftover files. A warning: use of the more drastic WITHOUT_MAIL option can remove /usr/bin/fmt, which is used unconditionally by some src targets. So you may need to install fmt by hand, or patch the src Makefiles so that fmt isn't used.) All this doesn't take very long, and doesn't need to be done all that often on an existing system, so the presence of sendmail in the base system shouldn't worry you too much, even if you don't want to use it on your system(s). b.