Re: Postfix and local mail delivery - still relevant in 2020?

[mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)]

cryintothebluesky%gmail.com@localhost (Sad Clouds) writes:

>> Simple answer, mail is used by automated tasks to deliver results
>> to users.

>OK, but does this really require the entire Postfix infrastructure?

You don't use the "entire postfix infrastructure", it's just there
if you need more. A local mail system with the same properties
wouldn't be much smaller.

But yes, you could do that. And then need to replace it, if you go
beyond a simple standalone system. For me that sounds much more
costly, YMMV.


>I kind of understand that it is traditional in Unix to email daily
>reports to a sysadmin. This may have been reasonable decades ago, but
>in 2020 it seems a bit primitive and not very useful for even a medium
>number of networked systems.

IMHO such systems should be as simple as possible, and "primitive" is
an advantage, because then it has a chance of being used.

If you need something more sophisticated, you may chose from many
different solutions according to your needs and how much time and
energy you can spend on setting up these systems.


>There is a lot of information that can be collected on a daily basis,
>for example - cpu/memory/disk/network metrics, thermal metrics, firewall
>logs and alerts, mail/web/database/backup logs/alerts, etc. Sifting
>through all of that in emails does not seem very productive.

Why would anyone do that? You use your mail clients to filter and
sort such things.


>I'm thinking that Postfix and similar, are good for running mail
>servers, but for system monitoring and alerting, there may be better
>tools out there.

Since when does Postfix system monitoring and alerting?
Are you still talking about removing postfix or about removing daily(5) ?

-- 
-- 
                                Michael van Elst
Internet: mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost
                                "A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."