Re: mail/postfix: install bin/{mailq,newaliases}?

["J. Lewis Muir" <jlmuir%imca-cat.org@localhost>]

On 01/16, Edgar Fuß wrote:
> I'm asking myself whether mail/postfix should be installing bin/mailq
> and bin/newaliases (which are symlinks to sbin/sendmail) on a system
> equipped with mailwrapper(8).
> 
> This has bitten me in three different ways:
> 3. On a build server with pkgsrc postfix installed, net/nagios-plugins 
>    configures it check_mailq to call /usr/pkg/bin/mailq, which fails on 
>    systems without pkgsrc postfix installed (while calling /usr/bin/mailq 
>    would work regardless of postfix being installed or not).
> 
> Opinions? One could argue that:
> 3. should be dealt with by teaching the configury to use /usr/bin/mailq if 
>    present whenever /etc/mailer.conf exists or it's a link to 
>    /usr/sbin/mailwrapper.

I haven't looked at net/nagios-plugins, but am I right that it needs a
program to invoke that behaves like sendmail in order to send emails?
In that case, I don't see a good way to make it always choose the
right thing, so it seems like it should be a configuration file option
of net/nagios-plugins where you specify the program to invoke.  If
net/nagios-plugins does not have a configuration file, then perhaps it
could be modified to support taking the program from an environment
variable (e.g., NAGIOS_PLUGIN_SENDMAIL) and the user arranges to have
that environment variable set correctly.  If neither of these is
possible, then it seems like it would need to be a pkgsrc package option
for net/nagios-plugins set at build time.

Maybe another approach would be some kind of pkgsrc meta package that
promises to provide a sendmail-like program.  Make net/nagios-plugins
depend on that package and invoke its sendmail-like program.  Make the
pkgsrc meta package choose the best sendmail-like program (built-in or
otherwise).

Regards,

Lewis