F20 - Unintended consequences of no default MTA - How best to fix

[Chris Murphy]

On Jan 3, 2014, at 11:24 PM, David G. Miller <dave at davenjudy.org> wrote:
> 
> This is as close as I can get to the "end" of this discussion since I get
> the digest so it will have to do.  I've seen you claim over and over that
> "no one" uses e-mail for system notifications.

It's hyperbole for me to say "no one" because it's clearly not meant to be literal. But it's true that from a high altitude perspective, it's in the realm of 99%.

>  This is the exact opposite
> of my experience (30+ years with computers, 25+ years with Unix systems and
> 15+ years with Linux including currently working as a Linux/Unix engineer).

> Do you have *ANY* independently verifiable numbers to back up your claim?

Yes it's called observation. Windows doesn't inform users of problems by email since never. OS X likewise, in effect has never done this because root was disabled, even though postfix is installed by default even to this day. iOS and Android never have either.

Restricting the context to just Fedora, by default it is a desktop OS with a GUI. That's the default install from live desktop, DVD ISO, and netinst media. That is the primary Fedora deliverable and experience. It is simply inappropriate for such a system, in the year 1999 let alone 2014, to silently produce "important" messages via email as if the user will somehow just magically discover them. And in fact, that's not how it behaves, the user is properly informed of important messages via alerts in gnome-shell (and presumably on KDE), for things like SELinux alerts, crashes, and degraded raid arrays (via udisks). So in fact this is working rather like I expect, whether it's Fedora 19 or Fedora 20. By default I don't have to configure anything to be informed of urgent issues.

> My experience has been that Linux newbies don't know about root e-mail and
> go whining on various discussion boards about how they didn't know that
> there was a problem until someone points them to root e-mail and e-mail
> aliases.  If these are the "no one uses e-mail" people you're claiming is
> "everyone" then you're listening to the wrong people.  Or is it just that
> these are the people you agree with?

I definitely agree with them. If it's important they should be logged. If it's critical/urgent then I should get an alert in the GUI. That's actually how it works for some time. Emails are an inadequate and therefore inappropriate default means of communicating because we know they will not be discovered by most users. The RTFM approach obviously isn't working, at all.

And for those who prefer the email notification approach: yum install <mta>. It is possible that with F21's server product this could revert to having an MTA by default if the server working group deems it an important feature to have.


> Personally, I find the Windows practice of hiding notifications behind an
> inscrutable "event log" interface to be far, far worse than getting e-mail
> notifications.  I'll take logwatch e-mails any day over an event log since
> it also lets me watch for trends or anomalies that may not break a reporting
> threshold.  Likewise, I compare the typical event API notification to being
> like the "idiot lights" most cars come with.  You know, the "over
> temperature" light that comes one AFTER steam is coming out from under the
> hood or the tire pressure warning light that comes on as you pull off the
> road with a flat?

I think these are all bad examples because they're clearly broken notifications if they notify of obvious things. The alerts that appear in gnome-shell that I've seen have always been for non-obvious problems that needed attention like a dead hard drive in an array and the system kept on working normally otherwise, as it should in degraded mode.


> I have not had the displeasure of trying F-20 without an MTA yet.

I know, 'yum install <mta>' is just sooo stressful. Geez. 



Chris Murphy