Re: mailutils in stretch
On Fri, Jul 07, 2017 at 09:41:33AM +0200, Sven Joachim wrote:
> On 2017-07-07 02:06 -0500, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> > What was the reason for omitting mailutils (and, specifically, a
> > functional /usr/bin/mail binary) from the default strech install?
>
> For the record, mailutils have never been part of a default install, but
> bsd-mailx (which also provides /usr/bin/mail) was until Jessie.
I stand corrected. bsd-mailx does sound more familiar, now that you
mention it, but mailutils was the (first) `mail`-providing package I
found when I started looking with `apt-cache search`.
> > That's kind of a standard thing to be there on *nix systems...
>
> For better or worse, a default Debian installation seems to not omit
> various programs that have been standard on Unix systems.
Yes, exactly, which is why I was so surprised by /usr/bin/mail's
disappearance.
> There are certainly reasons for that, and I don't think many people
> use /usr/bin/mail to send or read mail these days.
<snip>
> Packages using /usr/bin/mail to send reports should depend on, or at
> least recommend, bsd-mailx | mailx.
The reports in question weren't from packaged reporting tools, but
rather from random command-line programs being run with a command of the
form `some-program 2&>1 | mail dave -s "some-program results"`. Is
there a more "modern"/preferred way of doing this sort of thing, which
will work in a default stretch install (and doesn't require adding
headers to the program output to make it suitable for piping directly to
/usr/sbin/sendmail)?
Before someone points out that cron mails output to the user whose
crontab it runs from, these commands aren't being run directly from a
crontab. Most are in cron.(d/daily/weekly/monthly), which doesn't
appear to support mailing the output to a non-root user or customizing
the subject line into somthing more useful than "Cron <root@host> test
-x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )".
--
Dave Sherohman
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