please deactivate services by default!

[Giancarlo Niccolai]

Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-09-25 at 19:05 -0400, Alan Cox wrote:
>   
>> Log files tend to contain stuff like passwords typed in the wrong box so
>> we shouldn't casually point mail off box. Also a lot of mail from cron,
>> logging etc will be mail to explain your internet connection is down or your
>> email couldn't be forwarded ..
>>     
>
> Which does no good if we don't actually lead people to read this mail,
> one way or another.  Right now we just hope that they figure out some
> how to start collecting root's mail before it fills up filesystem.
>   

Sorry for jumping in the discussion; as a user of multiple distros and 
of multiple versions of each distro,
I feel this point terribly sensible.

Figuring out what's the right way(TM) to get root mail on one distro is 
not exactly a cakewalk, and it requires usually some sysop skills that 
are not always readily available to the mean desktop user. And even for 
developers (as I am) and power users, it's a annoying waste of time.

When you switch distros or you find newer versions of the same distro 
having different policies on this topic, unless your business with Linux 
is having fun in tweaking the system config, you easily give up with a 
"oh well, I have 250GB hd, I'll figure out how to dump this trash before 
filling it up, eventually".

Pitifully, the vast majority of distro maintainers ARE guys who have 
lots of fun in tweaking system configs...

I think it's high time for everyone else to have an easy 
desktop-accessible place from where to check for sensible logs, with a 
flashlight on the taskbar when some critical warning is issued and with 
sensible self-cleanup policy...

Bests,
Giancarlo.