On Wednesday 28 September 2005 14:34, Steve Lamb wrote:
> Marc Haber wrote:
> > UNIX philosophy is "one job, one tool". Most utilities that can send
> > mail for one-or-the-other reason depend on some
> > /usr/(lib|sbin)/sendmail where they can dump their messages to,
> > relying on it to actually deliver them. I'd call that an MTA.
>
> Yes, so it has been said. So let me reiterate, since when did that
> trump robustness and error handling? That, too, is another tennant of
> UNIX philosophy.
That tenet is respected in the Unix tradition by using distinct tools that
have well-defined, debuggable interfaces between them (e.g. SMTP and
sendmail's handling of stdin).
> > Unfortunately, smart-host for a desktop needs rewriting capabilities.
>
> Since when?
Without it, the batch job mail will be from and to
userid@???, which is probably not the right
address for receiving it or for replies and bounces.
> > it doesn't. nullmailer is appropriate for systems where end system
> > and smarthost are under the same control so that the smarthost can be
> > configured to cater for nullmailers inadequacies. However, on a ISP
> > smarthost setup, a fully featured MTA is needed on the end system.
>
> Since when? I see absolutely no need for it at all.
I think a machine connected to an ISP particularly needs address
rewriting, especially if the machine is on a NAT LAN with hostnames that
aren't resolvable outside the LAN.
