Les Mikesell wrote: > Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: > >> It is also reasonable for a machine to only need to deliver locally >> generated mail. > > It wouldn't be much fun if all machines did that. > But that doesn't change the fact that it is reasonable for some machines. Or are you saying that because some machines need to receive mail from the outside, that by default all machines should be configured to receive outside mail? Why should my laptop accept incoming mail when it does not have a valid domain name, or a fixed IP address? It makes a lot more sense for Thunderbird to talk to the IMAP server to get mail, and to ether the ISP's or my hosting company's SMTP server to send mail. This is especially true when I am using a WiFi hotspot. It would be interesting to what percentage of machines running Linux actually need to be configured to accept incoming mail connections from the outside. Most WEB servers probably do not. Most desktops are not going to need to ether. Unless a file server is also a mail server, it does not need to accept outside mail. Granted, most servers are going to need to be able to send mail someplace, but only machines that are a mail server are going to need to accept incoming connections, and not being able to accept incoming mail connections by default is what you are complaining about, right? Now, if you were arguing that Sendmail should not be the default mail server, then I could maybe see having the default Sendmail configuration accept incoming mail connections. Realistically, most machines probably do not need most of the features of Sendmail. Then again, if it were not the default mail server, you would not really need to supply a default configuration because you are going to have to configure the mail server anyway. Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
