Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 7 Dec 2017 08:05:08 -0800 (PST)
From:      "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd-rwg@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net>
To:        Baptiste Daroussin <bapt@freebsd.org>
Cc:        arch@freebsd.org, gshapiro@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: RFC: Sendmail deprecation ?
Message-ID:  <201712071605.vB7G58ek062860@pdx.rh.CN85.dnsmgr.net>
In-Reply-To: <20171206223341.iz3vj4zz2igqczy7@ivaldir.net>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> Hi all,
> 
> I would like to propose the deprecation then removal of sendmail in base.
> 
> Deprecation will happen in the form of FreeBSD 12.0 being built WITHOUT_SENDMAIL
> by default

Thats not proper by procedure, FreeBSD 12.0 needs to have a binary that
spits out a
"This program is depricated and well be removed in the next release",
that would include all programs that are part of sendmail.

> 
> removal would happen in FreeBSD 13.0

if you set WITHOUT_SENDMAIL in 12.- it is removed from 12.0 release,
so if your intent is to "remove" it in 13 you need to change when
you set WITHOUT_SENDMAIL to 13.0

> 
> sendmail in base it not really usable as a full featured mta due to the fact it
> does not support anything an entreprised grade mta setup would require: ldap
> support for example, check the number of options available in the sendmail port.

I suspect that less than 1% of FreeBSD users are "entreprised(sp) grade" so the
argument that our users need ldap is just a strawman.  The fact that you
use dma(8) to replace it only reinforces that fact.

It is bad that sendmail has way to many compile time options and that many
of those options need stuff not in base to make work, but that is the state
of software spaghetti.

> Users for that use case would be better served by the port version of sendmail.
Again, strawman, that use case is I am fairly sure a very small one.

> 
> The other kind of users are the one using the default setup of sendmail:
> relaying emails externally and deliver locally.
> 
> We have dma(8) which is way smaller than sendmail(8) have a configuration file
> understandable by most users (yet that is subjecttive) and have the setuid
> binary capsicumized.
> 
> dma(8) has been modified to fix issues reported by clusteradm preventing its
> usage in real life situations:
> https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=208263

That bug is still open????  

> 
> I think only providing dma(8) by default and let users choose a full featured
> mta via packages is a good solution and better for both sendmail users and non
> sendmail users.
> 
> If noone express a strong opinion by then, I will turn sendmail option off by
> december 15th.

Strong opinion expressed, procedure is not being followed by this request,
hence I would say no to this request as worded.
Further more this request appears to be biased on the idea that our users
need ldap in sendmail and I just do not see that as a truth.  
And even further more it appears as if the proposed replacement has open
bugzilla reports that proclude it from even simple operation using
.forward files.
And my final point, the whole sendmail/dma issue goes to /dev/null if we
had pkg base working.  So lets stop wasting time talking about culling
little parts of BSD out and get to spending that time on helping get
pkg base done.

-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes@freebsd.org



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?201712071605.vB7G58ek062860>