On Sunday 26 November 2000 14:52, Russell \"Elik\" Rademacher wrote:
> Jeez Brian.
>
> Why you have to be so upbeat on the Sendmail? If you checked, Mandrake
> preferred Postfix over the Sendmail for lot of reasons and used it as
> default.
Just because it's the default doesn't mean that they should deliver broken
copies of the non-default packages. For example, I wouldn't expect Mandrake
to deliver a broken Gnome, vim, joe, ntp4 or any other non-base package.
Similarly I wouldn't expect RedHat to deliver a broken KDE.
The sendmail bug sounds severe enough (barring configuration errors, and I'm
not qualified to make that judgement) that the package should not be
delivered as in a production release (cooker is a different matter
altogether).
> If you have problems with Sendmail, why not just compile a new
> one for yourself and install it. It is not that hard to do it anyway,
> since I used Sendmail, Qmail and Postfix and I liked the Qmail and Postfix
> over Sendmail anyday.
We don't need religious wars over which is better. For the original poster's
system, sendmail may be the "better" package - neither you nor I can make
that decision.
> So.... just try and do that method and do it that way? Or get the Source
> RPM version of Sendmail and check the specs and fix it before having it
> built and compiled.
>
> That what most true administrators and linux gurus would do if the
> released packaged RPM version is not 100% perfect.
Now you're getting rude. Maybe "true administrators" would simply ignore the
bugs and build their own package. That's a good way to make sure that it's
still broken in the next release, and if you do that with enough packages,
you'll eventually end up with a crappy distribution that has no added value.
A GOOD administrator will do several things:
- clearly document the bug
- report the bug using formal bug reporting facilities, and do so politely
- verify that the bug is fixed in a new release
- report back to the developer that the bug is indeed fixed.
Loud complaining about packages delivered in a cooker release doesn't do
anybody any good. I EXPECT some packages to be broken, and I accept that.
I've had my systems unbootable on several occasions, and I had no KDE (and
hence no e-mail) for over a week. That's what cooker is all about. If
Mandrake would do this to me with production releases, then I would complain
and/or switch distributions.
According to the changelog delivered with sendmail-8.11.1-3mdk.i586.rpm, this
bug is supposed to be fixed. That said, if I've lost mail before because of
a sendmail upgrade, I'd probably take extra steps to make sure that it
doesn't happen again. After all, you don't know for SURE that setting the
executable to suid is enough to fix the problem. I've also written code
myself when I though I'd fixed a bug and it was still there. Ya just never
know...
The following is NOT a polite, formal bug report:
> > > WELL I GOT NEWS FOR YA!! I lost about another dozen mail messages
> > > again today becuase IT IS NOT FIXED!!
Let's all remember we're working with people here, and people have feelings.
We should also expect that no one intentionally does a bad job.
--
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
