Subject: Re: turning sendmail into a symlink
To: maximum entropy <entropy@zippy.bernstein.com>
From: Soren S. Jorvang <soren@t.dk>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 12/05/1998 22:35:14
On Sat, Dec 05, 1998 at 01:47:18PM -0500, maximum entropy wrote:
> >From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
> >
> >In order to make life easier on people who use alternate mailers, and
> >in order to make integration of Postfix (a new mailer I'm considering
> >integrating in addition to sendmail for 1.4), I am proposing that
> >/usr/sbin/sendmail turn into a symlink to /usr/sbin/sendmail.real, and 
> >that mailq and newaliases, which are currently hard linked to
> >sendmail, turn into symbolic links.
> 
> I'd prefer to see sendmail and all its support files installed in a
> directry such as /usr/lib/sendmail, and have all the "normal"
> locations such as /usr/sbin/sendmail, /etc/aliases,
> /usr/libexec/mail.local, etc... be symlinks into this directory.

While I am somewhat wary of 'symlink compatability' in general,
I like this way of doing it (/usr/libexec though). Postfix
already defaults to /usr/libexec/postfix and renaming /var/qmail/bin
to /usr/libexec/qmail would be the right place if someone were
to bend qmail into the shape of hier(7).

I am inclined to just say, do this with the New Default Mailer
(probably Postfix), keep the other one around in /usr/libexec/other
for those who just won't use the alternative and change
the sematics of NO_SENDMAIL (or some other name) to simply mean
'don\'t clobber /usr/sbin/sendmail and friends).

No point in trying to cater for all sorts of "choices" in the
base installation.


-- 
Soren