-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Reasons behind defaulting atd and sendmail
From: Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Community assistance, encouragement, and advice for using Fedora.
<fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 09/05/2008 10:04 AM
The fact that you don't use a service the way it was intended doesn't
make it useless.
> Pretty much every program with a unix heritage assumes that sendmail is
> available to deliver occasional status and warning messages.
Thank you for your response, however, I did not install Fedora just
yesterday. I came about writing this e-mail *after* observing common
usage of Fedora by normal desktop users. Please read the other follow-up
postings for more in-depth details, but I'll reply to a few of your
other comments below.
The point of using mail for these notifications is that it can easily be
configured to deliver it where you want, instead of accumulating where
no one looks at it.
Turn it off if you aren't going to read it - but a better approach is to
configure sendmail to deliver it to a gmail account or a place where you
will read it without having to go out of your way and where the space it
consumes until you read it won't be a problem. I suppose it would be
nicer if fedora had a 'fill-in-the-form' setup to configure sendmail to
use a remote relay that needs smtp auth and to forward everything since
those are common needs these days.
Adding a form during installation to setup an MTA will only frighten new
users. Most would probably skip it anyway as they wouldn't know their
ISPs smtp server.
But! Let's say for a moment we have it your way and give users a chance
to get e-mail notifications on their desktop. They'll only be receiving
a logwatch e-mail telling them a `df` or what packages they installed
from the latest Fedora update rollout -- I'm sure if I ran a poll a
majority would say this kind of e-mail is useless. Just open a file
browser to find free space.
I don't know what you think 'normal' users do, but most of the point of
having a computer is that it can do things for you automatically.
sendmail is only utilized by logwatch through a default Fedora install.
Yes, lots of traditional unix programs used a MTA, but Fedora doesn't
install any of those. Why should a default Fedora install user have to
suffer just because *you* want them started up?
I'm looking at the majority of users here. Simply because you use
sendmail to send you an email or atd to tell you to wake up in the
morning doesn't mean default Fedora install users use it. This kind of
elitist attitude does Fedora no good.
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