Reasons behind defaulting atd and sendmail

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Michael Cronenworth wrote:
> Are there any legitimate reasons why the "atd" and "sendmail" services
> are enabled by default? A "default" install is for a desktop and they
> are quite useless in that regard.
> 
Unless you disable cron, it is needed to process the output of cron
jobs. By default, it only listens to 127.0.0.1, so it can only be
used for local mail delivery.

> Sendmail only stores the logwatch output, which actually accumulates
> after a period of time because no normal desktop user reads the mail. It
> could possibly fill up a hard drive on a small drive, such as a eeePC
> 4gb system. I realize we all have terrabyte hard drives now and logwatch
> is only kilobytes in size, but it's still garbage. Don't get me wrong, I
> use logwatch mail on Fedora server installs, but for a desktop user...
> who never reads it...
> 
Someone should be reading the main. You can change who gets root's
mail. (/etc/aliases for all of root's mail.) Or you can change cron
so it does not send any mail. (/etc/crontab) If you have sendmail
configured so that it can send mail to another mail server, you can
send the messages to an e-mail account on another server.

> As for 'at' well... do *normal* Fedora users have any benefit from this
> starting up? I realize there is a gnome-schedule utility, but it is not
> installed by default.
> 
I am not sure why atd is active by default. You can control who can
use it with /etc/at.allow and /etc/at.deny. You can use it from the
command line, so you do not need a GUI installed.

I probably do not qualify as a *normal* anything, much less a
*normal* fedora user, but I have been know to use it to do things
like set a one-time alarm. I have a script called pizza that runs
"at -f ~/etc/alarm now + 22 minutes" to let me know when it is time
to check the pizza in the oven. :)

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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