From owner-freebsd-current Wed Apr 12 18:33:20 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from aurora.sol.net (aurora.sol.net [206.55.65.76]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 768C837BB3A for ; Wed, 12 Apr 2000 18:33:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jgreco@aurora.sol.net) Received: (from jgreco@localhost) by aurora.sol.net (8.9.2/8.9.2/SNNS-1.02) id RAA24385; Sat, 15 Apr 2000 17:05:55 -0500 (CDT) From: Joe Greco Message-Id: <200004152205.RAA24385@aurora.sol.net> Subject: Re: Integrating QMAIL in the world In-Reply-To: from Chuck Robey at "Apr 12, 2000 9: 8:38 pm" To: chuckr@picnic.mat.net (Chuck Robey) Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 17:05:55 -0500 (CDT) Cc: current@freebsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL43 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > On Sat, 15 Apr 2000, Joe Greco wrote: > > > Uh, Chuck, can you tell me how many BIND and Sendmail advisories there have > > been in the last five years? > > > > Wouldn't it be nice if we could just tell newbies, "hey, yeah, that Sendmail > > has a known security issue, pkg_delete it and then add this new one here". > > Or would you prefer to explain to someone who doesn't "have the least clue > > how to do it" how to upgrade BIND and Sendmail to the latest? > > > > The concept is beneficial from _many_ angles, not just the one I gave. > > > > Despite my tendency to promote the traditional BSD distribution style, that > > does not mean that I feel that everything in FreeBSD should arrive as it did > > on the 4.4BSD tape. I think that the ability to be able to select modules > > for inclusion or exclusion would be particularly useful. > > If you want to pick another one and by default install that, fine. If you > want to force new users to read all about mailers just to get their first > mail working, no, that's just too much, Joe, you're asking too much of > folks. If you've got a bone to pick with sendmail, that's ok, but you > have to pick a better one. If you can't decide on the best one, then how > in the heck do you expect Joe Public to do better? > > ALWAYS provide sensible default values, not a bunch of expert questions. Chuck, Please go back and read what I _wrote_. Your response assumes I made statements that I certainly did not, and suggests to me that you missed every third word in my previous messages. :-( In particular, I advocated including Sendmail in the base system in a manner that would allow it to be trivially removed (or, alternatively, not including it but making it a selectable package, like X11). This could, for example, be done in the very same way that we currently do loads of other crap, like /usr/games, proflibs, etc. More ideally, it would be done in a format compatible with the package management system, so that one could simply "pkg_delete" Sendmail and install a new one. Am I getting through now? :-) -- ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/342-4847 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message