Let me answer various messages from this thread in one reply:

I wrote:

>>I have no problem with the default setup (via sysinst, or default "empty"
>>rc.conf file, or however) to have a 
>>
>>  sendmail=UNCONFIGURED
>>
>>and the rc.d script to interpret that as "local and outgoing mail only,
>>via sendmail". That's the same as our rc_configured=NO default.

Andrew Brown wrote:
> yeah...that's pretty much what it does, except that since the rc.subr
> system only deals in yes and no values, the UNCONFIGURED setting gets
> changed to yes by rc.d/sendmail so that everything's happy.  when
> appropriate, of course.

I think I don't understand this part. If all this magic would be triggered
by a special value in rc.conf, I would not complain at all. I don't see how
we are forced to only use "yes" or "no" here.

I wrote:
>>But the current state does not allow me to stop sendmail from running,
>>even by an explicit
>>
>>  sendmail=NO
>>
>>I have removed /etc/rc.d/sendmail on my machines as a short term fix.

and I was wrong (judging only from the commit message). It actually works
and it is what I'm going to do now.

This, of course, makes the whole change acceptable. All remaining differences
are cosmetics.

Havard Eidnes wrote:
> Well, I guess the problem was that you didn't tell the system
> what you wanted, and the default changed.

And this is true. I can live with the default behaviour change, now that
I've learned how to deal with it correctly.

I presume there will be a very prominent warning in the update part of the
release docs.

To summarize: I fully agree with the "local and standard outgoing mail
must work out of the box" paradigma. I think the sendmail setup that is
invoked by a default install now is sane.

But I totally dislike the way that the "sendmail" variable in the rc.conf
system is calculated. IMHO it should default to "NO" and stay that way,
unless the admin set it to "YES" or the default install set it to 
"AUTOMAGIC" (or something to that effect), which explicitly calls for
conjuring spells that "just make it work".

Having learend that at least the admin telling it explicitly "no magic,
please" will do what I want, I can live with the stuff as is - but I still
don't like it.

Martin