Re: default MTA

[Bjørn Mork <bjorn@mork.no>]

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
> Bjørn Mork <bjorn@mork.no> writes:
>
>> The local MTA serves as a common configuration for the external SMTP
>> server, with a well known interface supported by every single package
>> which wants to send mail.
>
> And which requires storing passwords or other authentication credentials
> on disk if your external SMTP server requires authentication (increasingly
> common), which is bad security practice (not to mention awkward for a lot
> of people to configure).  Whereas using an external MTA directly in the
> mail client means the mail client has the ability to prompt you
> interactively for authentication credentials or use the system keyring to
> store them, which is somewhat more secure.

Yes, this is a problem common to any system wide authenticated service,
like for example a bluetooth keyboard or a PPP network connection.  I
still don't think it makes any sense delegating the configuration to
packages needing those services.  The keyboard and the network
connection are system services, even if they need credentials stored in
the file system.

IMHO, the same goes for SMTP.  There may not be as many packages needing
it as those needing a keyboard. But I'm guessing that there still are a
handful SMTP clients installed on an average single user desktop system.
And it does not make sense to have each and every one of those packages
configure external SMTP access independently.


Bjørn