[ On Wednesday, November 24, 2004 at 21:05:28 (+0100), Marc Haber wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [exim] about Sender: and envelope reverse-path in today's systems
>
> logrotate wants to e-mail old logs if the number of logs to be kept is
> exceeded, updatedb from findutils might fail.
It is _trivial_ to ensure that cron never has to send any mail during
normal operation regardless of whether something it runs spews error
output or not. Save the output to a log file and make sure the exit
code that cron sees from the child process is always zero (and save a
note about the real exit code in a log file).
It should be just as easy to ensure that nothing else supplied with the
system ever thinks it can send mail either (though I have a hard time
even thinking of anything else in a base OS which can even be configured
to use e-mail to communicate to the system manager -- at least not on
any BSD-like system).
You are in control of the system -- the system is not in control of you!
You don't need an MTA, even just a local-only one, just to manage any
unix-like system, especially when you're in the position to design other
better and easier-to-use mechanisms to replace the traditional use of
e-mail for system reports.
A workstation, in particular, should never send mail all by itself -- it
is the basis for a human interface and it should use those tools to
communicate with its human user(s).
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP RoboHack <woods@???>
Planix, Inc. <woods@???> Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
