Re: Re: RFC: Making mail-transport-agent Priority: optional
* Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> [111014 11:50]:
> On Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:17:38 +0200, "Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org> wrote:
> > > - Taking time to download and install, which increases the time and
> > > bandwidth needed to install or upgrade a Debian system.
> >
> > Please drop the "upgrade". If you deinstall it there is no cost at
> > upgrading.
>
> I think the point here is that people that accept a default install are
> liable to not be brave enough to remove chunks of the system, or even
> perceptive enough to notice that some daemon that seems to be surplus to
> requirements is running, let alone then doing the work to find out that
> they can safely remove it, and then actually do so.
>
> Also, most normal users will never remove it on the basis that it's
> "standard" (assuming that they discover that fact).
>
> That being the case, they will get every upgrade.
Now are you spealing about normal users or about users that know enough
to know they do not need a MTA?
If you do not know that you do not need one then you should have one
installed. Being able to invoke sendmail to notify a user about
something is a core part of a UNIXoid system. It'd not that core as
having /bin/true or other parts. But not having it is special.
> My brother comes to mind -- he's pretty happy with Debian and if he
> didn't know me it's _just_ possible that he'd have installed it himself,
> but would have simply accepted every default. He uses icedove as his
> MUA, pointed at a remote SMTP/IMAP server -- I seriously doubt that he'd
> ever see root mails, and even if he did, he'd ignore them as he
> cheerfully did on all his windows boxen in their death throws -- I'm not
> sure what we should do about that, but running exim seems unlikely to be
> the answer.
Every shell will usually tell you some "You have new mail". So in case
some part of the system wants to notify, there will at least some
information.
> My preferred default would be postfix, with ssmtp on client type
> machines, so I generally preseed all that to avoid pointlessly
> installing exim, which of course means that my personal preferences are
> totally irrelevant to this discussion, as we're trying to determine
> useful defaults for people that will end up living with those defaults.
ssmtp had no queue last I looked (and is buggy like hell). This means
having shortly no connection to the mail server means mails are lost.
Having exim as satellite is really perferably there.
Bernhard R. Link
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