Re: Bug#510415: tech-ctte: Qmail inclusion (or not) in Debian
On 11876 March 1977, Gerrit Pape wrote:
> Hi, I'm not sure I'm reading policy correctly. Is it okay to provide
> such a newaliases program
> #!/bin/sh
> cat >&2 <<EOT
> qmail on Debian by default doesn't support the /etc/aliases database,
> but handles mail aliases differently, please see
> http://lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html#aliases
> EOT
> exit 1
> which will be diverted and replaced by a fully functional version if the
> fastforward package is installed? This way users would be able to
> choose which alias mechanism to use easily.
It is only ok if the smtpd does use the information from /etc/aliases
without newaliases doing anything. Nothing allows you to ignore this
file. So no, with the above output it is not ok.
The policy reads:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/etc/aliases is the source file for the system mail aliases (e.g.,
postmaster, usenet, etc.), it is the one which the sysadmin and postinst
scripts may edit. After /etc/aliases is edited the program or human
editing it must call newaliases. All MTA packages must come with a
newaliases program, even if it does nothing, but older MTA packages did
not do this so programs should not fail if newaliases cannot be
found. Note that because of this, all MTA packages must have Provides,
Conflicts and Replaces: mail-transport-agent control file fields.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So a `newaliases` doing nothing is OK, but the aliases defined in that
file have to work.
--
bye, Joerg
[Talking about Social Contract]:
We will not discriminate noone[...]
[So we discriminate anyone?]
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