On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2001 at 03:38:52PM +0000, Matthew Byng-Maddick wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, David Cantrell wrote:
> > > I neither know nor care. I was taking issue with your claim that relying
> > > on /usr/lib/sendmail is a good idea.
> > This arose because of your original claim that relying on an SMTP listener
> > is a good idea. What happens if, say, your reverse DNS is temporarily
> > unavailable
> Then you have more important things to worry about, such as finding an
> ISP with a clue.
Yes, agreed. But you shouldn't just be injecting mail unless you know what
will happen on failure. Handling errors sensibly is a part of good
programming.
> > and some hosts are deferring messages from you? This policy
> > will probably be implemented across backup MXs too. SMTP allows for
> > deferral. If you can't stick them on a queue, you shouldn't be trying to
> > do SMTP.
> Why not? It's not as if the sort of people using web-mail scripts without
> their own mail server have anything important to say. If it was important,
> they would invest in their own server or at least an ISP that provided
> appropriate facilities.
Personally I don't want to lose mail. This could happen if I try to do
SMTP and get it wrong. It is less likely to happen with (eg) batch SMTP or
a sendmail -t implementation.
> Of course, what you should do is try *both*. Actually, you should first
> try to use a module. If that fails, see if /usr/lib/sendmail exists and
> is executable. If it is, then great, use it. If it isn't available, try
> direct SMTP. Graceful degradation is a Good Thing.
Agreed. What do you think the module will do? :)
> > /usr/lib/sendmail is a good interface for not worrying about
> > this, as it will always put messages on a queue in the first place. 4xx
> > are deferrals.
> > Also, some MXs are *slow*. How do you guarantee to do your SMTP
> > asynchronously from your HTTP transaction?
> > If you neither know nor care, then why advocate this in the first place?
> Cos it's wrong to just assume sendmail is available.
It's also wrong to assume that SMTP is available. :)
> BTW, try reading what I write in future. If you had, you would have
> noticed that I said "(joke)" after talking about looking for relays.
I wasn't actually replying to that, if you go back in the cascade. I
realise that that is a joke :). It was the other bit I was replying to.
> If you think that counts as 'advocating' that, then I would suggest
> investing in some English lessons.
You might want these lessons, to read the cascade. That was a seperate
subthread. sorry. you lose.
MBM
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