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Re: design issues in debian packages



On Wed, 19 Dec 2001 10:01, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Russell Coker wrote:
> > No!  Programs that mailbomb root are EVIL.
>
> Crap, all programs that mailbomb are evil, but crontabs that mail errors
> are useful and have been in use for ages. They just need to be careful
> not to turn into mailbombs, and Matt has nicely done that
> in the latest upload. Don't force everyone to install logcheck just
> because you don't want emails from cron.

Logcheck installation isn't forced.  If someone doesn't want to install 
logcheck then they can use whatever other proceedures they want for viewing 
logs and then take appropriate action.  Other system programs in common use 
such as named only send errors to syslog not email, so why should this be 
different?

Sending lots of mail is bad.  For small end-user systems such as Brian's 
there is no guarantee that mail will be read before the disk fills up (lots 
of people don't read mail to root).

For large setups such practices aren't viable either.  Consider a case where 
you have 50 servers running a variety of programs administered by a team of a 
dozen people.  When a cron job runs wild and emails everyone it doesn't gain 
anything as often such mail isn't read (some companies I've worked for have 
had mail filters to stop mail from applications that are known to send a lot 
because of machines in other departments mail bombing), and anyway if the 
program stops working then THAT will be what causes it to be fixed not some 
error messages anyway.

-- 
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http://www.coker.com.au/projects.html Projects I am working on
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