Subject: Re: Upgrading removes sendmail, breaks system config
To: None <current-users@NetBSD.org, tech-userlevel@NetBSD.org>
From: Pavel Cahyna <pavel@NetBSD.org>
List: current-users
Date: 07/11/2007 14:30:46
On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 01:00:11PM +0100, Matthias Scheler wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 11:32:10AM +0000, Pavel Cahyna wrote:
> > > Automatically switching to postfix may cause very bad surprises as well if
> > > you have tweaked your sendmail config to do special things.  I think the
> > 
> > Is the surprise worse than not switching to postfix and leaving the mail
> > system broken?
> 
> Yes, much better:
> 
> 1.) If my mail server at home doesn't accept SMTP connections the mail will
>     be queued on the backup mail server and not get bounced.
> 
> 2.) If Postfix would however start without proper configuration it would
>     bounce all lot of the e-mails instead e.g. because it wouldn't know
>     that "scheler.de" is a local domain and that "matthias@scheler.de"
>     should be delivered to my account.

I don't think so because, AFAIK, default postfix does not listen on
network, only on UNIX domain sockets.

> There is no way a transition from Sendmail to Postfix can be handled
> automatically. So warning the user and recommending to use the
> "sendmail" package from "pkgsrc" is the best we can do.
> 
> I would actually argue that the update should automatically add
> "postfix=NO" to "/etc/rc.conf" unless it was previously enabled
> with "postfix=YES".
> 
> Imagine a NetBSD 3.x system which uses Exim as the MTA. The "/etc/rc.conf"
> could look like this:
> 
> sendmail=NO
> smmsp=NO
> exim=YES
> 
> With NetBSD 4.x this might not work anymore because it will suddently
> try to start Postfix.

Good point, I haven't thought of that. A similar issue arised with
sendmail when it became a daemon and atatat solved it with some magic in
the rc script.

Pavel