On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 6:36 PM, Lennart Poettering
<mzerqung(a)0pointer.de> wrote:
On Fri, 19.07.13 20:22, Miloslav Trmač (mitr(a)volny.cz) wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 8:16 PM, Matthew Miller
> <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 07:37:35PM +0200, Miloslav Trmač wrote:
> >> However, having the /usr/sbin/sendmail API available to applications
> >> is valuable - it brings a significant system administration benefit of
> >> centralizing the SMTP configuration.
> >
> > What does it mean to "have available"?
> Just that. The binary exists and does what it is expected to do.
Where "expected to do" means effectively route it to /dev/null?
It's actually less similar to /dev/null than log files are - log files
are rotated and deleted, mail stays in the mail boxes until explicitly
deleted (or space runs out).
> > As discussed earlier, I think it's
> > significantly better for applications to get errors (which they can handle)
> > than to think they've sent a message which really gets buried forever.
>
> In the case I'm thinking about, application installation instructions
> just say "make sure $sendmail works" instead of "configure SMTP (and
> TLS! and SMTP auth!) in this application-specific configuration file".
If features only work after configuration (in articular non-trivial
configuration like this case) then it should not be part of the default
install.
That a feature needs configuration does not automatically exclude it
from the default installation - removing a package from the default
installation and telling users to install it back is just window
dressing and asking them to do unnecessary extra work.
> > I think the way forward is to encourage applications to
_log_ rather than to
> > send e-mail, via this or any other API.
> Application that want to log shoud log. Applications that want to
> send e-mail should send e-mail. My bank's monthly statement would be
> rather useless in the bank's splunk archive.
Sure, but your bank web site probably doesn't send its mails out with
only tools of the default install?
"What is in the default install" is, as argued elsewhere, also an
implicit documentation of "how things are done".
Mirek