Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:33:10 +0000 From: Frank Shute <frank@shute.org.uk> To: Gonzalo Nemmi <gnemmi@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why is sendmail is part of the system and not a package? Message-ID: <20091029053310.GA98268@orange.esperance-linux.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <200910281711.54965.gnemmi@gmail.com> References: <4AE5F897.3000103@rawbw.com> <200910272046.00289.gnemmi@gmail.com> <20091028021417.GA93608@orange.esperance-linux.co.uk> <200910281711.54965.gnemmi@gmail.com>
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On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 05:11:54PM -0200, Gonzalo Nemmi wrote: > > On Wednesday 28 October 2009 12:14:17 am Frank Shute wrote: > > On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 08:45:59PM -0200, Gonzalo Nemmi wrote: > > > On Tuesday 27 October 2009 7:31:34 pm Jerry McAllister wrote: > > > > [snippage] > > > > > > So, that leaves personal preference as the only real reason > > > > for wanting to replace it. > > > > > > Let me get this straight .. that means that every Linux distro, > > > NetBSD, OpenBSD and DragonFlyBSD are all doing it just out of > > > personal preference? > > > > I'll speculate as to the reasons: > > Come on .. there was no need to speculate .. you have the whole internet > at your finger tips ;) Heh, I forgot about google ;) > > > NetBSD: probably wanted something smaller footprint-wise. > > > > OpenBSD: wanted something more secure. > > No, not really ... > > OpenBSD: > "A few months ago, I had to dive into the configuration of sendmail to > make a very small change. It turns out I spent almost an hour trying to > make sense out of a maze of files that were plain unreadable. Even the > slightest changes would cause me to stand a couple minutes thinking, > just trying to make sure I really wanted to make that change. ..." > > You'll find whole thing here: > http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20081112084647 > > > Dragonfly: started afresh, so could replace it without many > > headaches. > > By all means no .. not at all .. they didn't even started afresh .. > Anyways .. > You'll find the reasons here: > http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2007-03/msg00060.html > > "Hey, > again and again people are complaining about why sendmail is in base > and why not postfix, etc. We keep saying that we do need a mail > delivery/transport agent, for stuff such as periodic, cron, etc. > But that doesn't mean that we need sendmail. Actually a much simpler > mailer would do: one that just delivers locally (and if possible, > remote) and does nothing else. ... " > > and here: > http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/submit/2008-02/msg00000.html > > "Hi, > corecode@ announced his DragonFly mail agent in [1] as a small, simple > and clean implementation of a mailer in the base. The goal of dma was > not to replace a feature complete MTA like sendmail or postfix. The > basic intention was to be able to deliver mails from cron, periodic etc > to local users. I enhanced dma and added remote delivery and some other > features needed for works-out-of-the-box and to keep users happy :) > The list of all features follows: ..." > > Yet still, DragonFlyBSD as well as OpenBSD are in the procces of fully > moving to their respective mailers, unlike NetBSD which already moved > to Postfix. > > > RedHat: poor package management made it a pain to upgrade. > > That only accounts for only one distribution and I really don't know > what you mean with "package management" because they have a lot of > them ... I'm aiming at RPM. RedHat used to use Sendmail; I think Debian uses Exim but uses apt. Don't know about Suse. My main point though was that all of them had reasons to dump Sendmail. > > > FreeBSD: ? > > > > I can't think of a good reason why FreeBSD should get rid of it. > > > > Saying that, it would be neat if it was taken out of base and > > replaced with something minimal that could cope with the demands of > > cron and not much else. Then the user is expected to install a MTA of > > their choice out of ports. > > > > That would mean less code in base and fewer security advisories. > > Yup .. I fully agree with you ... I just cancelled my freebsdmall.com > FreeBSD suscription in order to use that money to buy OpenBSD > releases .. so my money gets used to finance the development of > OpenSMTP and other milestone technologies. > They've earned it :) Thanks for the informative post Gonzalo. I like the look of the Dragonfly approach (although I don't use it). Perhaps in FreeBSD 10* somebody might work to incorporate one or the other (DMA or OpenSMTP) and strip out Sendmail and leave it in ports where it belongs. I can see that having real benefits in licensing, footprint and usability. > > > > > ////jerry > > Best Regards > Gonzalo Nemmi Regards, -- Frank Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html
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