Re: why use sendmail?
On Sun, Mar 31, 2002 at 02:08:41PM +0100, Simon Hepburn wrote:
| dman wrote:
|
| > The reason is that KMail is not a proper SMTP client. The RFCs (821,
| > 2821) state that if a message can't be delivered to the next server in
| > charge, then it must keep the message and retry later. It can't just
| > say "oh, well" and give up. KMail (along with Lookout and every other
| > User Agent) doesn't do this.
|
| In such a situation KMail keeps the undelivered message in the outbox. I
| don't think you could call that "giving up". The message is not simply lost
| in cyberspace.
Ok, so then KMail isn't _quite_ that evil.
| How does Kmail keeping the message and trying again later differ
| from what an mta does ?
Will KMail automatically try at ever-increasing intervals for a given
amount of time and then genarate a bounce that _will_ be delivered to
the sender if the mesasge can't be delivered? For the first point, if
you quit KMail it certainly can't. I imagine it requires you to press
a button again to have it retry. For the second point, it is
impossible. After all, the failure occured because kmail can't get to
the server that is supposed to handle delivery. If it generates a
bounce, then it would have to transfer it to the server it can't get
to for delivery. I also question how complete and robust any MUA's
SMTP implementation is. An MTA isn't a trivial project. Notice that
I'm not discrediting KMail in any way, I just don't believe that any
MUA should try and handle SMTP.
-D
--
Micros~1 :
For when quality, reliability
and security just aren't
that important!
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