F20 System Wide Change: No Default Sendmail

[Oron Peled]

Hi,

On Friday 19 July 2013 14:16:57 Matthew Miller wrote:
> .... 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.

True, but it doesn't have to be buried forever, at least not for the
default (desktop) install:
 * Default delivery as today (no smart host, deliver to local mailbox)
 * We should add the local inbox to the default configuration of all
   MUA's that can handle it (kmail, evolution, etc.)
 * When Anaconda (or would it be first boot? I lost tracking...) is
   setting the first user, add it to /etc/aliases as a mail alias to root.

With this, on every *default* desktop the installing user start getting
useful system mails from various packages as they are installed (logwatch,
arpwatch, cron-jobs, etc.)

IMO, removing sendmail from the *minimal* install is good idea, but
we should have an MTA for the default install with local delivery.

> I think the way forward is to encourage applications to _log_ rather than to
> send e-mail, via this or any other API. That can be configured for e-mail
> alerts if the admin really wants.

Logging and mail have totally different use-cases. With mail you can send
an extensive multi-line report to a human.

As explained in the previous section, with very basic default configuration
for MUA's and MTA's you get a very high chance that the desktop user who
installed the system would actually see these mails (and any user would
see the output of their cron-jobs).

These same users are very unlikely to know that logs even exist, much
less how to read them.

[and all non-privileged users cannot see the output of their own
 cron-jobs...]

> But without configuration, nothing is
> going to happen _anyway_.

Other use-cases would need configuration anyway. If you install a VM
you may really want remote logging (as well as smart-host mails).
But then such deployments are usually done by knowledgeable people
with appropriate tooling (kickstarts, configuration-management tools, etc.)

To summarize:
 * Remove from minimal install -- so advanced use cases can get rid of MTA.
 * Leave on default install:
   - Adding local mailbox to default configuration of MUA's would be
     an improvement.
   - Adding the installing user as a root alias to /etc/aliases would be
     another improvement.

Bye,

-- 
Oron Peled                                 Voice: +972-4-8228492
oron at actcom.co.il                  http://users.actcom.co.il/~oron
"It's almost like we're doing Windows users a favor by charging them money
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