From owner-freebsd-hackers  Tue Mar 28 11:14:44 2000
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To: hackers@freeBSD.org
Subject: DJB: FreeBSD4 alt MTA trick considered harmful
From: Chris Shenton <cshenton@uucom.com>
Date: 28 Mar 2000 14:14:19 -0500
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Saw this on a qmail list.  DJB's not got the best bedside manner, but
he's pretty good about preventing loss or damage to mail.  What about
supporting his /etc/mta implementation instead?

--Chris (not the poster below)



    From: "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>
    Subject: Re: FYI: FreeBSD 4 and alternate MTAs
    To: qmail@list.cr.yp.to
    Date: 19 Mar 2000 21:05:18 -0000

    Chris Johnson writes:
    > It's very nice, and does away with the ugly symlinks.

    It does away with symlinks by inventing its own pointless file-based
    symlink format. It then needs an extra program to interpret that file.

    That program is, as it turns out, unreliable at high loads. If the
    kernel is low on file descriptors at the wrong moment then the program
    runs sendmail! What a disaster. Metzger should be ashamed of himself.

    See http://cr.yp.to/etc-mta.html for a simpler, faster, _correct_
    configuration mechanism that doesn't try to reinvent the filesystem.
    Please encourage your OS vendor to support /etc/mta, not mailer.conf.

    ---Dan



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