alanpatriot.net
Date: Tue Apr 08 2008 - 16:09:02 CDT

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Mark Goodge wrote:
> alanpatriot.net wrote:
>>> alanpatriot.net:
>>>> To be more specific: why does postfix, in a local Unix/Linux
>>>> environment, have any dependence on procmail?
>>> Postfix has no such dependency.
        There have been a good many posts claiming this. But then:
        why was my installation of procmail, from one of my Debian
        etch DVDs, able to make postfix work -- after yards and yards
        of over-the-weekend effort? See below.

> There appears to be a lot of misunderstanding in this thread. Allow me
> to attempt to clarify:
>
> 1. Postfix does not depend on Procmail. It is never necessary to install
> Procmail in order to use Postfix.
       This claim is true -- in my experience -- up to a point. I was
       successfully using postfix to send out mail to the Internet
       already by Saturday -- with the help of Mouss, of course.

> 3. Some Linux distributions both install Procmail by default and
> configure Postfix to use it by default. This is not, though, "amending
> the code" of Postfix, it's merely using one of Postfix's features in
> their preferred default installation. You could equally have a default
> installation that uses any of the other optional features of Postfix.
      This is what still needs explaining. I have taken a look at the
      documentation for building postfix, and nowhere did I see any
      mention of how to build postfix to use -- or disuse -- procmail.

      And I fear I must here mention again: procmail is nowhere
      mentioned in _my_ files in /etc/postfix (main.cf master.cf etc)

> 4. If a distribution has a default Postfix configuration which differs
> from the default defaults (if you see what I mean), then it is up to
> them to document that.
      I'm afraid I _don't_ see that. The postfix community here, from
      Wietse on down, is pretty adamant that a) postfix should and
      usually does work out of the box; and b) if it doesn't it is
      someone else's fault. "This is no way to run a railroad", as
      my grandfather used to say.

> The maintainers of Postfix cannot be responsible
> for every possible configuration tweak that distributors may apply to
> their software.
       Whose software? This is, AFAIK, Wietse's software. And I would
       suggest that before effort is expended on integrating elliptic
       curve encryption into postfix, that some effort is made in
       ensuring that whatever Mail Delivery Agent(MDA) is used by
       any implementation of postfix, that there is a way for hapless
       end users to find out what that is.

Jimbo has written:
        <ROTFL> Did you read my earlier post(s)? _Nothing_ about procmail
> was/is in my master.cf or my main.cf .
>
I'm sorry you feel this way, but if Postfix is logging that delivery to
command /usr/bin/procmail is failing, then something in your
configuration is definitively referencing procmail. Postfix does not
just randomly try to deliver mail via commands.
       Not clear what "just randomly" means. If there is a choice of
       MDAs then that should be made clear in the documentation.

Viktor has written:
> Suggestion: as soon as possible update the section in your
> documentation: Specific environments: Linux issues. And I'm
> guessing you know some Debian people; you might even know the
> maintainer for the Debian postfix package.

No free lunch, they can't outsource their documentation work to
unpaid contributors whose software they integrate and sell. If Wietse
maintained release-specific Postfix documentation for a few hundred
Linux distributions, MacOS X, and the various BSDs, he'd not have time
for anything else, let alone Postfix development.
       I reiterate my suggestion above about priorities. And besides,
       what is Debian, chopped liver? Debian has been around for a
       decade at least, and it seems to me that Linux distributions
       fall into two main classes: Red Hat derived(using rpms and yum)
       and Debian derived(using deselect and apt)

And I'm as paranoid as the next person(my paranoia has increased over
the past week<g>), but the image of an evil Debian packager monkeying
with pristine postfix code in order to mislead the unwary rings untrue
to me.

I understand the concept of an MDA as little as I understand the
concept of a FQDN. But I believe that the MDA issue is what is
operative here; especially because my fetchmail, broken before my
installation of procmail, became operative after that installation.

I'm not sure how well these comments will sit with the postfix
community. I hope that some attention will be paid. Despite the
toil of the past week, I think that postfix is useful and important
(I've used sendmail -- ugh! -- and qmail, and have made some ventures
for a short time into exim, and postfix is IMHO the best of them)

Bottom line: please pay attention to the MDA issue!

Best wishes,

Alan

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