Why would mandriva want sendmail? [solved]

[uralmasha]

Many thanks for updating the urpmi-sources list!

 

I ran an update using

urpmi  --auto-select --media LE-main,LE-contrib,LE-jpackage

 

However, the first thing urpmi asked was, which mail sending software I will use:

1- mini_sendmail-1.3.5-3mdk.i586 : Accept email on behalf of real sendmail (to install)

2- masqmail-0.2.18-3mdk.i586 : Offline Mail Transfert Agent (to install)

3- ncsmtp-0.1-2mdk.noarch : Null Client SMTP daemon with aliases support (to install)

4- exim-4.50-1mdk.i586 : The exim mail transfer agent (to install)

5- ssmtp-2.60.7-1mdk.i586 : A minimal mail-transfer agent which forwards mail to an SMTP server. (to install)

6- postfix-2.1.5-6mdk.i586 : Postfix Mail Transport Agent (to install)

7- sendmail-8.13.3-2mdk.i586 : A widely used Mail Transport Agent (MTA) (to install)

Your choice? (1-7)

 

I woul not like to have mail sending software on my PC (yes, I am a dummy paranoid linux user).

Is this normal? What is the purpose of having a sendmail needed for an install/update?

[adamw]

A _lot_ of *nix software depends on there being a mail server, as a standard notification method on *nix is to deliver a mail message to a local mailbox (usually root@localhost). This is kind of archaic and most users don't bother to have it properly implemented on their systems any more, but we still honour the requirement for several packages. The easiest thing to do is just install one and not sweat it; the default configuration of all MTA packages in MDV is not to do anything at all even if they're turned on (well, I think maybe sendmail accepts mail sent by a locally running process to a local mailbox, but that's about all), and it's trivial to just install sendmail and turn it off ('chkconfig sendmail off' as root).

[uralmasha]

Ok, Thank you!

There seem to be more problems with the upgrade.

[Guest Adriano1]

Like what? Please elaborate so we can help you better...

 

I wanted to add that a reason for installing an MTA like sendmail, postfix or the like is compliance with the Linux Standard Base guidelines. And that you can disable the service from the Mandr* Control Center in the System section, using the Services app.

[uralmasha]

Ok, I got with the sendmail. It's just that it never asked me to do so before, although I have ran urpmi.update --auto-select.

 

I would like to wait untill more mirrors in my neighbourhood (NL) are available, before posting the problems as a separate thread.

 

(1)

Curl cannot download some of the packages, the link appeares to be broken. Additionally, there are bad sigantures on the other half of the RPM's. But I thought this question would sort out after more mirrors are updated.

 

(2)

The main problem is however that after the update the perl installation breaks, and so do some other libraries (e.g. vi or vim won't start). This was also the case with the cooker sources a month ago, but then I concluded that I wasn't skilled enough to handle the cooker :-)

 

Anyways, so far I fixed the perl installation, just like the previous time, with

rpm -Uhv /mnt/cdrom/media/main/perl-* --force --nodeps

but later when I can get hold of a mirror nearby, I will repeat my attempts with the system update and report here in another thread.

 

I am very happy to discover quite helpful and friendly community here, thank you very much!

[adamw]

If you only got a half-upgrade that's certainly possible. If, for instance, UPDATED-HALF contained perl, then nothing that depends on perl in NON-UPDATED-HALF would work properly. If perl was in NON-UPDATED-HALF, nothing in UPDATED-HALF that depends on perl would work properly. You'll only have everything working once everything can be updated. I agree with your own idea, just wait for the mirrors to settle down and try again.

 

BTW, what probably happened is one of the packages you had installed did not previously require an MTA, but the requirement was added in a recent version of the package, either because the package only just came to need an MTA or because the requirement was only recently noticed.