edit root alias when installing the OS

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Am Dienstag, den 03.01.2006, 23:35 -0800 schrieb Jesse Keating:
> On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 23:24 -0800, Jarod Wilson wrote:
> > 
> > My belief is that there are too many users who don't, and making it  
> > easy for them to shoot themselves in the foot would lead to more  
> > trouble than its worth. But for giggles, since I'm in the process of  
> > trying to teach myself python, perhaps I'll try to put something  
> > together that does give users the choice...
> 
> Why not both?  When creating a user, have a checkbox to 'deliver root's
> email to this user', then also have a input dialog that says 'forward
> this user's email to "______" address'.  This way multiple users can be
> listed in the root alias, and each user can have their local mail
> delivered elsewhere if desired.
> 
> Just my $0.02

I really like the idea. 

BTW, the bug report #176767 that was opened during this discussion to
get this fixed in the future was closed as a dupe of #135592. There one
reads:

> The bigger question here is why root is receiving mail in the first place.

Side note: At least logwatch (daily) and sudo (in case someone tried
something that is not allowed) send mails to root. The first one even is
active in a default install iirc.

And this is quite annoying sometimes: At my workplace the local MTA
after a fresh install figures out the MX of the domain automatically and
send the mails to root at ourdomain.foo -- that's quite annoying because
that is somebody else that is getting upset about all these mails from
systems he doesn't know anything about...

>   Most
> people aren't going to check this even if they are aware it exists.  We should
> be working on a better way to inform people about what's going on with the
> system instead of relying on local mail

I disagree. Yes, for desktop-systems there are probably better ways to
inform people. But mail is also okay IMHO. And I can't think of a better
way for servers to inform the admin about problems...
-- 
Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info>