[csw-maintainers] CSWcswclassutils: it wants to write in /usr

[Ben Walton]

Excerpts from James Lee's message of Wed Dec 23 04:28:39 -0500 2009:
> I'd consider anything that directly used /usr/lib/sendmail to be
> broken and I realise that includes system functions like cron
> output.

Yes, but we've got a _lot_ of years of history here that aren't about
to be corrected any time soon.  exim and postfix emulate sendmail
options for a reason.  This isn't an issue on solaris only, either.
It extends to any *nix I've encountered, although we now typically
look for sendmail in /usr/bin elsewhere.

> However, it does work, this gets to my normal IMAP account on another
> zone/machine with exim but using sendmail as the first local hop:

...but this is only by chance, and is site/setup dependent.  What if
you only allow relay internally using LMTP or submission(587) w/tls?
Your setup would then fail unless you also maintained a separate
sendmail config...at which point, why replace it in the first place?
It's fragile at best.

> It's not important to me because sendmail does work.  The reason I
> use exim is because I want to do more than just deliver locally
> generated mail and exim is easier to configure and do the advanced
> things like use SQL for routing variables.

I use it for the same reasons.

> It would be best if mailx etc. were more aware, eg, the system looked
> for "mailhost" in the hosts list and used SMTP (analogous to loghost
> and syslog).

Without something like this, there is a lot of opportunity for mail
policy problems.  Say you need all mail routed out via a designated
relay machine, or qualified with your $tld.  The default sendmail
config will talk directly to the world and doesn't do 'good things'
with qualification of local addresses without a bit of hand holding.
You now need to maintain a separate sendmail.cf to match what you're
doing with the exim config.  Somewhat self defeating.

The other thing to consider with a setup like this, straddling two
mailers, is that you've now got two queues and if sendmail isn't
active, you'd need to push it's queue manually in the event that there
are hiccups on the initial delivery.

Two mailers is just plain broken.  A bug, if you will.

-Ben
-- 
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302

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