Reasons behind defaulting atd and sendmail

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Mike Cronenworth wrote:
> 
> You're nitpicking unnecessarily. I know fully well that the incoming
> port needs to be opening, which is why I stated it as a point against
> default sendmail startup. No regular desktop Fedora user will even
> thinkg about su'ing, vi'ing, or even consider needing an MTA. They'll
> open up Evolution or Thunderbird to send an e-mail.
> 
No really - you said that it requires a lot of work to be able to
receive incoming mail. I don't feal that changing one rule in
sendmail.mc, recreating sendmail.cf, and checking a checkbox in the
firewall GUI a lot of work.

> Example: Your User-Agent shows you used Thunderbird to reply to my mail
> and it travelled through a route that never included using sendmail. You
> arn't even using it yourself.
> 
Nope - I use Postfix, not Sendmail. Besides using it for cron
messages, (These get re-routed to my personal account.) I have
several cron jobs that send mail over the Internet. I also accept
incoming connections from other people on the LAN. I have a POP/IMAP
server so we can get e-mail from it. For that matter, I use the
Infinity mail server even when I am on the road with my laptop.

>> If you have a mail server on your LAN, you can configure Sendmail to
>> use it without much trouble. It is also not that hard to configure
>> Sendmail to accept incoming connections. All it takes is editing or
>> removing one line, and regenerating the config file. Or if you are
>> brave, you can edit the config file directly. The change is fairly easy.
> 
> Why would a user who installed using the default Fedora method need to
> do this? No one has given me an example. Just the fact that you can do
> it, which I already knew.
> 
Well, have the example of the output of cron jobs. The OP does not
read them, but they really should be
> P.S. Future responders can skip treating me like I just installed
> Fedora. You're talking to an individual who has years of Unix
> experience. I know what MTAs are for, what uses them, rules of jobs,
> etc., etc. Please look at my original question from the standpoint of a
> *default* Fedora install. What do sendmail and atd do for a default
> Fedora install? In fact, what do they even do for other packages? I am
> not asking this for my own benefit, but for the benefit of a regular
> Fedora user. If you require their service you will know yourself and
> have to configure and startup (chkconfig or whatever suits you) those
> services. Don't use the "Just Because" clause.
> 
Remember, we are not just writing responses to you, we are also
trying to clarify things for the OP, as well as people searching the
archives.. You original post was misleading to a new Linux user.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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