Re: More tasks option in Tasksel: what tasks do you want there?

[Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org>]

On 09/08/2014 07:45 PM, Ralf Jung wrote:
> They are often surprised to find Exim on their
> system just because they checked "standard system utilities"

Well, not only a mail server:

Package: task-mail-server
Architecture: all
Description: mail server
 This task selects a variety of packages useful for a general purpose mail
 server system.
Depends: ${misc:Depends},
        exim4
Recommends:
        dovecot-imapd,
        dovecot-pop3d,
        mailx,
        mutt,
        exim4-daemon-light,
        exim4-config,
        procmail,
        mailagent,
# HELP: what about some webmail thing?
        spamassassin,
        sa-exim,

Note: Recommends are enabled by default in d-i. So it would install a
lot more than just an MTA.

> or an NFS
> server (which IIRC is installed unconditionally).

Package: task-file-server
Architecture: all
Description: file server
 This task sets up your system to be a file server, supporting both CIFS
 and NFS.
Depends: ${misc:Depends},
        nfs-kernel-server,
        samba
Recommends:
        samba-doc,
        smbclient,
        swat,
        cifs-utils,
        winbind,
        smartmontools

It's by the way surprising to see smartmontools, just as if monitoring
HDD health is only important for a file server. My take: it's always
important, whatever you do with a computer.

Anyway, all this shows that it's too generic for an advanced user.

> Having separate tasks for mail and NFS servers, would IMHO be a good
> step in the right direction.

Yes. Though the design idea behind tasksel is to have generic "theme"
and not technical words which a user wont understand. (note: it's not
that I agree (or not) with this design choice, this is just a fact that
I am mentioning here...)

> "SSH Server" is the only task I consider actually useful.

Don't you also find that "print-server" is also useful?

Thomas