F20 System Wide Change: No Default Sendmail

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Dim 21 juillet 2013 16:05, Matthew Miller a écrit :
> On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 08:58:39AM +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>> it. Yet the "something better" never materialized. When I had a disk go
>> wrong lately I was notified by the big ugly legacy system. I had *zero*
>> notification by all the "better" systems that were given as "evidence".
>> Because the "better" systems do not exist. None of the 'smtpd is legacy"
>> complainers have actually tried to solve the (remote) notification
>> problem, none of them actually understand the reliability and
>> operational
>> constrains, or that being to define message routing (via aliases,
>
> Sure they do. I can't imagine an installation of any size (eg more than 2
> systems) not using Nagios, Icigna, or some other alerting system.

And none of those is a general solution, they've never agreed to a common
API which has a reasonable chance to be available by default, so no app is
going to target them. They're all an optional overlay to the default
system tools, that processes a very narrow subset of notifications and
requires dedicated tools and people.

> If you're in the narrow case between a desktop system and an installation
> where real monitoring and alerting is worth it, install an MTA.

Where is the desktop notification solution in Fedora? There is none able
to even remotely approach the capabilities of the cron + MTA bits you so
dislike. Even running the latest and greatest rawhide nothing desktop-side
caught a very basic event like a failing disk! The only state-of-the-art
part of our notification chain is the smtpd element, everything else is
hacks or unfinished prototypes (state-of-the-art as in, what are Google
and Amazon using to notify their users of events? Mail messages! They
would be ROFL if they were reading this conversation. If it's not done yet
I predict they'll integrate their phones and tablets and notify you of
problems by mail in the next years.)

The limit if there is one is between standalone Fedora and server with
lots of external infrastucture, and this later use-case has never
justified removing built-in capabilities. Fedora is batteries included,
not "can't do anything by default, add third-party tools" Solaris.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot