Ceri Davies writes:
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 11:10:59AM -0500, James Carlson wrote:
> > > I'm specifically trying to make it easy to swap out sendmail, and I
> > > think that for anyone unaware of mailwrapper's presence that ls output
> > > such
> > > as the following:
> > >
> > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Nov 25 13:44 /usr/bin/mailq ->
> > > ../sbin/mailwrapper
> >
> > I think the existing hard links function just fine.
>
> Hard links can't really be used as people aren't supposed to install
> their own stuff into /usr, apparently.
Correct, they're not. (They often do, but as long as they don't tromp
all over the documented filesystem(5) interfaces, and are just doing
things like /usr/local, there's no problem.)
> > As an architectural matter, I don't think that the readlink() contents
> > of symlinks in /usr/bin should be considered to be "documentation" for
> > the system. I understand what you're saying, and that it's an
> > intentional kick in the seat to the admin, but I don't think that's
> > the right way to do this.
>
> You're probably right. If there are no objections, I can install the
> mailwrapper binary at /usr/lib/sendmail.
>
> What does that mean for the manpages, specifically wrt section numbers
> for mailwrapper?
I would do something like this:
- move the existing sendmail(1M) to sendmail-mta(1M) or
sendmail(1MTA) (or whatever's most appropriate for the places
where the MTAs will be hidden).
- create a new sendmail(1M) (with a man page link as
mailwrapper(1M)) that describes the wrapper interface and points
to the places where the per-MTA descriptions can be found.
Leaving the existing sendmail(1M) in place (which documents "the"
/usr/lib/sendmail), but changing /usr/lib/sendmail to be a symlink off
in some other direction sounds like a confusing result to me.
--
James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
