On Sun, May 07, 2000 at 12:01:45AM +0200, jrfern@bigfoot.com wrote:
> > Debian packages which process electronic mail (...)
> > <em>must</em> make sure that they are compatible with the
> > configuration decisions below.
> > Failure to do this may result in lost mail, broken From: lines, and
> > other serious brain damage!
> If the Policy uses <em>must</em>, it's not up to the sysadmin
> to decide. Her decisions <em>have</em> to be compatible. Period.
AFAICT that requires that the package be able to do the standard Debian
thing (and default to it) rather than requiring that it only do that.
The user can configure their system however they like.
> CONCLUSIVE QUESTIONS
> Is qmail an inherently non-Policy packet? Should the Policy wording
> be modified? Doesn't the Policy have a bias for a sendmail-like
> system? Have the security implications been considered (see Bugtraq
> 1999-1, discussion between Venema and Berstein)? Did I miss something?
Our users will not like us if they have to reconfigure their Debian
boxes to interact with anything else. For all that the default Unix
mail setup sucks, the standard interfaces to the mail system are pretty
much those Debian has with minor variations. This is sendmail-like, but
that's mainly because sendmail got there first and provided a de-facto
standard for how the mail system should look to the rest of the system.
Breaking that as standard is something that shouldn't be done lightly.
> How about an /etc/mailsystem conffile?
> For instance (of course this is naïve)
> mta=qmail|sendmail|smail...
> mda=...
> spool=
> aliases=
> mboxformat=mbox|mh folders|maildir...
Personally, I think that'd more trouble than it's worth. It'd require
every mail program to behave differently on Debian and would probably
confuse as many people as it helped.
--
Mark Brown mailto:broonie@tardis.ed.ac.uk (Trying to avoid grumpiness)
http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/
EUFS http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/
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