Ubuntu is under attack

[Peter Garrett]

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 03:20:10 +0000
Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org> wrote:

> 
> An out of the box Ubuntu install will not generate any email. 

Erm, Matthew, as far as I know, an out-of-the-box Ubuntu install runs cron
jobs. Are you saying these jobs don't generate email? If so, I
respectfully submit that you are wrong. Or are you saying that because we
don't see them they don't exist?

>Nothing is discarded. 

See above. Could you explain why, as soon as mailx and postfix are
installed I get messages from root? (Postfix installation asked me who to
send them to) Is this magic? Do the messages suddenly get generated as a
result of the user knowing that they *should* ? Wow, Ubuntu is not just
intelligent, but psychic!

>If you install anything that generates email, then it is your 
> responsibility to ensure that you have something that will process that 
> mail. 

I agree. The Ubuntu developers have installed cron/anacron (rightly). It
is therefore their responsibility to supply a mechanism for delivery of the
mail these things generate, is it not? How do you propose to square your
statement with this obvious fact? You are "hoist with your wn petard"
here, it would seem.

>If it's considered a vital part of the package functionality, then 
> that will be described in the package dependencies. 

Apparently something is broken in the dependencies, then.

> Postfix remains a 
> supported part of the Ubuntu distribution - the only difference between 
> the situation in Warty and the situation now is that it isn't installed 
> by default. However, it's *on the CD*.

But you just said that anything installed that generates mail should have
an MTA of some sort - and as I pointed out above, cron/anacron are
installed by default. So whose responsibility is it to install some kind
of MTA?

I am not writing this to be combative: I'm writing it because your
reasoning appears to be faulty here. You say one thing and do another?

> If you disagree with 
> any of the technical decisions, then please bring it up on ubuntu-devel. 
> However, if your only argument is that postfix should be installed by 
> default, then I'm afraid that it's not a situation that's likely to 
> change. 

I see. A very long thread appears on the users list, complaining about
functionality, and the response is to stand on your dig. Is it remotely
possible that some of the posts actually have some merit? Is it possible
that the developers have actually got it wrong?

> If you feel that it's vital for a distribution to come with an 
> MTA as part of the default desktop install, then I'm sorry. Ubuntu isn't 
> for you. It never was.

This misses the point totally. The issue is that important messages are
going to /dev/null. If you can suggest another way to implement a sensible
way to have those messages appear, please do. So far I see your reply as
an attempt to sweep people's concerns under the carpet. That is
disappointing indeed.



Peter


-- 
Unix is hard to learn. The process of learning it is one of multiple small
epiphanies. -- Neal Stephenson