On 05/29/2013 03:14 PM, Simon McVittie wrote: >> Your parents don't read mail? That is surprising to me. In this days >> and age, everyone does. > > They read mail received on a remote server (mine, their ISP's, or > Google's) via IMAP or webmail (or possibly POP3, if I hadn't advised > them not to use that). It has nothing to do with the local machine's MTA > (or lack of).
It has everything to do with it. Just setup the mail for root to be sent to whatever email address they use. That's it, problem solved. > In principle I suppose Icedove could start up with a "local mbox" > account pre-configured... but is that really where users would/should > expect to find system notifications? They should expect to receive it in their "main" mailbox. > I suspect we only use email as a > system-level notification mechanism because "it's how Unix has always > worked". How much sense does it really make to have potentially > security-sensitive messages from the local machine, whose content you > ought to be able to trust, turn up in the same place as "postcards from > the Internet"? If you don't like your current mail provider, and think he's not safe, just change that provider and use something better. This has absolutely nothing to do with the matter discussed here. >> Can't you configure their system to send *you* the system >> notifications so that you can fix a problem? > > I could, but for machines where it isn't really needed, life's too short > to set up the necessary TLS/SASL to get root mail off the system > without leaking its contents (and a SMTP password) to everyone on the > same coffee shop wifi. Oh ok. So the real answer: you don't really care. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51a5b916.5000...@debian.org
