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

[Sad Clouds <cryintothebluesky%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Sat, 6 Jun 2020 20:29:54 -0000 (UTC)
mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst) wrote:

> >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) ?

I'm questioning if having Postfix in the base system is that useful
and how many people actually use it. I'm trying to understand how people
use subsystems like Postfix when they have no requirement to run email
servers. It seems the main reason for having it is to use it as a basic
MTA and email daily/weekly reports to sysadmins. Essentially it is used
as a monitoring tool, that can take the output from other tools like
netstat, vmstat, etc and email it to someone. There doesn't seem to be
any other use case for having it. Or maybe I'm missing something here.

It seems quite often Postfix is pointless on a desktop system. Most
users tend to use some GUI MUA that has built-in MTA + POP3 + IMAP
capabilities and doesn't even talk to a local Postfix subsystem.

If you run a network appliance, you can setup Postfix to email daily
reports to some remote email server. However you now have to setup and
administer this email server, and maybe POP3 or IMAP server. You also
need an email client. You could also use other peoples' email
infrastructure (Gmail) but then they could potentially monitor all your
activity. This seems like a lot of faff just for the sake of some basic
email alerts and reports.