Re: We need a new subject- bug fixes

Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:

All programs are like programming...
What does that have to do with how they are configured?
The difference is that with most of
the others, the distribution provides something that works so you don't
have to rewrite the programming yourself.

That is because they use more rational configuration method.

No they don't. Have you built a kernel from scratch that included everything that fedora includes? Or apache with all the modules built?
It isn't fun - or very rational. However, you don't have to do that if you install fedora. The point of the packaged distribution is that the work is already done and maintained.

Maybe
if Sendmail did as well, it could be treated the more like other
services.

Sendmail does give you the opportunity to use a pre-built configuration. Fedora just doesn't provide one that gives the upstream functionality.

The fact that sendmail's
macro language permits you to add unique operations is a feature, but
unless you need something unique (rare in a service with a standard
specification...) you shouldn't have to modify anything at that level.

This is the key - services with standard specifications. Sendmail is
non-standard when compared to other services.

There are standard specifications for mail behavior. None of the other programs follow any standards for config files. How you make it do it doesn't matter.

So why should it be
treated like other services. Or are you saying that there should be
a configuration program that directly modifies sendmail.cf?

To put it in line with the way other fedora configurations work, sendmail.mc should include lines from a directory under /etc/sysconfig that would control a few common options and allow milters to add themselves independently. There might be a system-config-sendmail utility that controlled the settings of those optional lines. Like other services, users should not need to edit the configs directly unless they have non-standard environments.

If you
want a mail program that can be configured like other services, then
you need a mail server that is configured like other services.

No you don't. You need the distribution to handle it the way it does the gazillion other programs it includes.

You keep harping that Sendmail should accept incoming mail by
default,

I'm not sure I've ever said exactly that, but you keep saying I said it for some reason. I'm saying enabling or disabling its access to the network should be handled the way the distribution handles other programs.

but you never give a valid reason why that should be the
default. Everything I hear comes back to "That is the way I use it,
so it should be configured that way."

Email would not be useful if someone doesn't accept network connections. So even if not everyone needs it, clearly some do.

> What you can't seam to grasp
is that your setup will work for maybe 1% of the users.

OK, if those are the ones that are making email work for the rest of the others, I'd consider them too important to ignore.

--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx

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