On 15 May 2013 06:49, "Dan Mashal" <dan.mashal@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 6:10 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam@redhat.com> wrote:
> > We now appear to have *four* virtual provides for mail servers:
> >
> > MTA
> > smtpd
> > smtpdaemon
> > server(smtp)
> >
> > This seems a tad excessive. exim and postfix provide all four. sendmail
> > provides MTA, smtpdaemon and server(smtp). Nothing else provides any of
> > them (though if we could just agree on what any of them meant or what
> > they were for, probably esmtp and ssmtp might want to).
> >
> > Nothing requires 'smtpd'. One thing each requires each of the others,
> > just to make things nice and complicated:
> >
> > [root@adam blivet (master %)]# repoquery --whatrequires MTA
> > ratbox-services-0:1.2.1-8.fc19.x86_64
> > [root@adam blivet (master %)]# repoquery --whatrequires "server(smtp)"
> > sagator-core-0:1.2.3-6.fc19.noarch
> > [root@adam blivet (master %)]# repoquery --whatrequires smtpdaemon
> > vacation-0:1.2.7.1-3.fc19.x86_64
> >
> > Good lord. Anyone feel like injecting any sanity? Anyone have a long
> > enough memory to know what the hell each of the different provides is
> > meant for? I seem to vaguely recall that 'MTA' and 'smtpdaemon' were
> > meant to express subtly different things, but I can't remember any
> > details.
>
> Sanity: Switching to postfix?

That's a matter of opinion and completely unhelpful to this discussion.

Adam, like you I seem to remember a subtle difference between MTA and the others. I think its because some MTAs only do local delivery, some do remote and some can do both. Eg sendmail needs procmail to handle the local part from distant memory.

Peter