Re: BTS says qmail's sendmail-clone is broken
On Tue, Feb 02, 1999 at 11:42:54AM -0500, Phillip R. Jaenke wrote:
> The sendmail replacement bin likely isn't broken. The qmail-src package
> is. Quite badly. The entire intent of qmail is *fast* and *secure*. The
> qmail-src package is fast, yes, but NOT secure. It does NOT follow the way
> qmail was meant to be built by default.
Debian's policy uses /var/spool/mail for delivery. MTAs must also use
/var/spool/mail by default. Qmail cannot do this and modification to
make qmail do this would be evil, given qmail's design. (I object to
shared mailboxes as well)
> The configuration symlinks, those are not a problem. In fact, I think
> they're a great idea. A bit poorly implemented (symlinking the entire
> /var/qmail struction to /etc/qmail would be nicer) IMO, but a secure
> implementation there.
That would be just as lame as putting everything in /var. /var/control
is linked to /etc/qmail. The purpose of /etc is for configuration files,
control holds all of qmail's configuration. /var/spool is for the mail
spool, and that is appropriately linked. /var/qmail itself should not
exist IMO, it's a dumb idea. It's WRONG according to every filesystem
standard there is. Debian's policy currently uses FSSTND, and will
eventially use FHS.
> Using /var/spool/mail/$USER is where it blows up. That's not what qmail is
> meant to do. Qmail is meant to deliver using the MBOX format. Which means
> mail is delivered to $HOME/Mailbox, as opposed to /var/spool/mail/$USER.
> This is a much safer and more secure method. Of course, with network
> mounted home directories, sometimes you might lose bits and pieces, but
> it'll happen with a network mounted /var/spool too.
Back to delivery.. There are two ways to fix this real quick and I am
almost certain one or both of them are documented in /usr/doc/qmail of
the built source package...
1. /etc/procmailrc:
Add DEFAULT=$HOME/Mailbox
2. /etc/init.d/qmail:
change the variable which controls the delivery. The default is
to use procmail but you can also use the normal delivery. Either
way .qmail takes precedence.
Noteworthy is that I use 1. even though I don't use qmail anymore. I do
not and will not use a non-dfsg free MTA anymore, exim works fine and
even speaks maildir. I have set it up to use procmail as well, which
ALSO speaks maildir nicely.
> If there's a bug/security hole in debian, it's most likely because of
> using /var/spool as opposed to the MBOX format. I'll do a dpkg -i of my
> qmail-src built qmail.deb today, and see if I can't confirm or deny this
> bug once my Motrin kicks in.
See the above two solutions, get rid of /var/spool/mail. It's only
there for policy's sake and you don't need it---all Debian's MUA's will
work with anything as long as $MAIL is set or you configure their .rc
files.
Only some small few tools rely on things being in /var/spool/mail.. Only
one i know of off hand is a little dotlock thing for use in sh scripts
that is sgid mail.
--
Anticipation is the sweetest form of torture...
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