On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 08:55:42AM +0100, Mick wrote > To complete the diagnosis we may need the version of your portage? ;-)
Sorry about that. Here are the details... [d530][root][~] emerge -pv portage These are the packages that would be merged, in order: Calculating dependencies... done! [ebuild R ] sys-apps/portage-2.1.6.13 USE="-build -doc -epydoc (-selinux)" LINGUAS="-pl" 0 kB Since it only shows up with mutt so far, maybe it's actually mutt... d530 mutt # emerge -pv mutt These are the packages that would be merged, in order: Calculating dependencies... done! [ebuild R ] mail-client/mutt-1.5.20-r4 USE="pop smime smtp -berkdb -crypt -debug -doc -gdbm -gnutls -gpg -idn -imap -mbox -nls -nntp -qdbm -sasl -sidebar -ssl -vanilla" 0 kB It is remotely possible that I did make the package.use entries manually, but very unlikely. Speaking of mutt, is there a way to turn off its insistence on creating symlinks called "sendmail"? My most embarressing moment as a linux user came several years ago when I first created an hourly cronjob. I wasn't aware of the need for ending it with "2>&1". The garbage output went to root via "sendmail", which was actually a symlink to mutt. mutt is a deliberately dumb mailer that simply pushes email out the door to my ISP's MTA. So the hourly garbage went to root at my ISP. They sent me a polite email asking me to kindly stop. <G> I took a couple of steps then. Besides adding "2>&1" to my cronjobs, I set root=<myaccount> in /etc/ssmtp/ssmpt.conf, so that any stuff getting through would go to my account at my ISP, not to root at my ISP. I also went around stomping on the symlinks. So far, I've discovered /usr/bin/sendmail and /usr/lib/sendmail and /usr/sbin/sendmail. In each case, I deleted the symlink, created a directory by that name, and did a "touch .keep" inside the directory. -- Walter Dnes <waltd...@waltdnes.org>