On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 7:03 PM, Bob Proulx <b...@proulx.com> wrote:

> Michael Grant wrote:
> > I'm still searching for an answer to this.
> > After upgrade from wheezy to testing, sendmail no longer starts.
> > I see that the system is using systemd.
> > ...
>
> Some comments that I think are relevant...
>
> Since it took a while for someone to respond to your question it tells
> me that it is a combination of tools that not many people are using.
> You are using sendmail in combination with systemd.  That is an
> unusual combination.  If it were widely used then many people would
> have been responding already.  Frankly you might be one of the few
> trailblazing that combination.
>

I do not mind trailblazing this to get this working for the greater good.
It may be an upgrade issue or some other dependency, it would not surprise
me in the least since this is a copy of an existing vm that I tried to
upgrade.

It is true that fewer and fewer people are using sendmail these days,
especially since it seems to have been orphaned.  Sendmail may be old but
it's incredibly reliable, well tested, and stable.

>
> Trailblazers are great!  They are the ones who make things happen.
> However not everyone wants to be a trailblazer.  There just isn't
> enough time for everyone to do everything.  You sound like a busy
> person without the time to debug everything.  Perhaps it would be good
> to change to a more mainstream combination?  If it were a mainstream
> combination then the problem would almost certainly already have been
> seen and fixed.  Something with a lot of users and a lot of support.
>

Maybe I will one day.

>
> In this case I would suggest that Sendmail is no longer the mainstream
> mail transfer agent.  Instead I suggest migrating to Postfix.  (Or
> Exim but I personally really prefer Postfix so will recommend
> Postfix.)  Postfix is well tested and very well supported.  There has
> been discussion of making Postfix the default mta on Debian.  (But
> that will never happen because Exim isn't bad just not as popular.)
>

I have tried postfix several times over the years.  I was surprised that I
was able to make seemingly innocent config mistakes in postfix and it would
just drop mail into /dev/null.  This is surprisingly difficult in sendmail
as its failure mode is to reject or not accept the mail in this case.

>
> Since you are using Sendmail I assume you have been using Sendmail
> forever.  You probably have multiple editions of the O'Reilly Sendmail
> book on your bookshelf.  You probably hate to take the time to migrate
> a working configuration tuned over decades to something different.  I
> have been there and glance over at my two remaining editions of the
> O'Reilly Sendmail books on my bookshelf.  Let me say that moving to
> Postfix was very easy.  I don't even have one copy of the O'Reilly
> Postfix book.  It has an easy to understand design and the online
> documentation is excellent.  I have been where you are with Sendmail
> and migrating to Postfix was a good decision for me.  I suggest that
> it would be for you too.  YMMV.
>

Well, you know, I never bought that bat book either!  But yes, you are
right, I have been using Sendmail since perhaps it first appeared in BSD, I
first encountered it in 1983 in BSD on the VAX 11/780, well before M4 and I
used to write my own cf files back then too!

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