From owner-freebsd-bugs Wed May 2 11:23:38 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org Received: from orthanc.ab.ca (orthanc.ab.ca [207.167.3.130]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9A92637B422 for ; Wed, 2 May 2001 11:23:34 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from lyndon@orthanc.ab.ca) Received: from orthanc.ab.ca (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by orthanc.ab.ca (8.11.2/8.11.2) with ESMTP id f42INVg25793; Wed, 2 May 2001 12:23:32 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from lyndon@orthanc.ab.ca) Message-Id: <200105021823.f42INVg25793@orthanc.ab.ca> From: Lyndon Nerenberg Organization: The Frobozz Magic Homing Pigeon Company To: Brian Candler Cc: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: conf/26774: Installation of rmail, even without sendmail In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 02 May 2001 10:50:02 PDT." <200105021750.f42Ho2N53957@freefall.freebsd.org> Date: Wed, 02 May 2001 12:23:31 -0600 Sender: owner-freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org >>>>> "Brian" == Brian Candler writes: Brian> Personally I think it should be the responsibility of a Brian> well-behaved MTA to provide an rmail workalike, and if the Brian> user specifies NO_SENDMAIL then they really don't want any Brian> part of sendmail, including its rmail (which is arguably Brian> sendmail-specific anyway) rmail (as part of UUCP) predates sendmail (and probably deliver). In the absence of an MTA (e.g. 7th Edition) rmail itself provided the simple next-hop forwarding capability required to move the mail along its path. With the introduction of MTA functionality into UNIX the MTAs provided their own rmail that let the MTA hook itself into the UUCP transport, primarily to allow for local delivery, but also to provide transport gatewaying and "intelligent" routing. So what does NO_SENDMAIL mean? I think it means "don't build the MTA software provided by sendmail.org." I don't think it means "don't build an MTA." The problem here is that current rmail's assume there will always be an MTA present, however there has never been a standardized command-line API for interacting with the local MTA. (The /usr/{lib,libexec,sbin}/sendmail one is about as close to a defacto standard as you can get.) We have mailwrapper, however I don't think that's the correct solution. The common sendmail command line interface just can't cope with things like DSNs, message tracking, and authentication. We need to come up with a brand new command line API for talking to the MTA (and MSA). Nobody seems to want to do this, though. --lyndon To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message