On 23 Feb 1997, Russell Nelson wrote:
> Ira Abramov writes:
>
> > - clean up the last few backward compatabilities with sendmail
>
> Which are?
umm, commandline options and stuff... someone mentioned a few days ago
that the commandline parameter user1,user2 on sendmail worked right (sent
to user1@localhost and user2@localhost) but in qmail's sendmail it did
<user1,user2@localhost>
stuff like that...
> > - find a nice solution for people used to using .forward
>
> .forward is badly documented. In most cases .forward can be renamed
> to .qmail.
yes, but go and send the word about it to a 1500 user system. 100 messages
will pong "how do I rename it?" and 400 more will be "what is .forward?"
I think the users shouldn't care what the mail server is. I have users
coming in and creating .forward files without asking... I don't envy
admins of big systems having to explain to every new yet experianced user
that comes through the door that .forward is dead, and .qmail is the one
to use... people like to import all their dot files and expect to go on
working as usual.
.forward doesn't have an MTA-specific sound to it (it's not .sendmail, and
I won't get more specific). why not just keep it as the default name?
better yet: have the compilation-time scripts ASK you, defaulting to
.qmail, but making .forward a possible name too. (or sticking it in the
runtime config files, add that to the "hardcoded UIDs revisited" thread)
>
> >- RPM and deb packages becoming a standard official distribution format,
> > right next to the .tar.gz file, to help Qmail spred faster
> > - stick to FSSTD and kick the binaries/manpages out of /var in the default
> > installation
>
> Kind of Linux-specific, aren't these?
FSSTD makes a lot of sense in ANY unix, IMHO. I wish something like it was
used on a more global scale. when a sysadmin skips from win95 to unix, he
remembers to flip the switch in the head, but between linux, AIX, Sloaris
and HPUX the shelles and most everything looks similar, yet the files have
to be found each time in different places...
at any rate, like many here said, /var is NOT a place for binaries for
many more than one reason. I'll symlink my installation out of there, but
it IS something to look at. I have no prolonged experiance with Unices,
but I have yet to find standard distributions, especially ones that are
freewares or GPLed and the like and are classified under "contrib" that
have the "nerve" to use /var for binaries :)
> Ira Abramov writes:
>
> > - clean up the last few backward compatabilities with sendmail
>
> Which are?
umm, commandline options and stuff... someone mentioned a few days ago
that the commandline parameter user1,user2 on sendmail worked right (sent
to user1@localhost and user2@localhost) but in qmail's sendmail it did
<user1,user2@localhost>
stuff like that...
> > - find a nice solution for people used to using .forward
>
> .forward is badly documented. In most cases .forward can be renamed
> to .qmail.
yes, but go and send the word about it to a 1500 user system. 100 messages
will pong "how do I rename it?" and 400 more will be "what is .forward?"
I think the users shouldn't care what the mail server is. I have users
coming in and creating .forward files without asking... I don't envy
admins of big systems having to explain to every new yet experianced user
that comes through the door that .forward is dead, and .qmail is the one
to use... people like to import all their dot files and expect to go on
working as usual.
.forward doesn't have an MTA-specific sound to it (it's not .sendmail, and
I won't get more specific). why not just keep it as the default name?
better yet: have the compilation-time scripts ASK you, defaulting to
.qmail, but making .forward a possible name too. (or sticking it in the
runtime config files, add that to the "hardcoded UIDs revisited" thread)
>
> >- RPM and deb packages becoming a standard official distribution format,
> > right next to the .tar.gz file, to help Qmail spred faster
> > - stick to FSSTD and kick the binaries/manpages out of /var in the default
> > installation
>
> Kind of Linux-specific, aren't these?
FSSTD makes a lot of sense in ANY unix, IMHO. I wish something like it was
used on a more global scale. when a sysadmin skips from win95 to unix, he
remembers to flip the switch in the head, but between linux, AIX, Sloaris
and HPUX the shelles and most everything looks similar, yet the files have
to be found each time in different places...
at any rate, like many here said, /var is NOT a place for binaries for
many more than one reason. I'll symlink my installation out of there, but
it IS something to look at. I have no prolonged experiance with Unices,
but I have yet to find standard distributions, especially ones that are
freewares or GPLed and the like and are classified under "contrib" that
have the "nerve" to use /var for binaries :)