FS#21521 - [postfix] Perhaps postfix shouldn't conflict with msmtp.

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Chris Brannon (cmb) - Friday, 29 October 2010, 08:18 GMT
Last edited by Gaetan Bisson (vesath) - Monday, 19 March 2012, 04:05 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Gaetan Bisson (vesath)
Architecture All
Severity Very Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 4
Private No

Details

Description:
pacman asks if I want to remove msmtp when I try to install postfix.
I don't see why I can't have both of these on the same system.
E.G., one might use postfix for local mail, while handling remote mail
with msmtp.

Steps to reproduce:
Run pacman -Sy postfix when msmtp is installed.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Gaetan Bisson (vesath)
Monday, 19 March 2012, 04:05 GMT
Reason for closing:  Not a bug
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Saturday, 30 October 2010, 14:08 GMT
It doesn't make sense to install both postfix and msmtp. Both provide smtp-forwarder, and both have conflicts for that. The only issue I see here is that msmtp doesn't include a sendmail wrapper, something that should be required for smtp-forwarders.
Comment by Loui Chang (louipc) - Saturday, 06 November 2010, 18:10 GMT
Why should a sendmail wrapper be required? It works fine without a wrapper.
I'd think it would be better to minimise conflicts if possible.
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Saturday, 06 November 2010, 18:27 GMT
if you want an smtp-forwarder to be a drop-in replacement for a different smtp-forwarder, then you'll need a common interface. Having a sendmail binary is such a common interface. Though msmtp can forward mail, it's useless to provide smtp-forwarder if it can't do drop-in replacement for other packages. It's not like cron and mailx will send out mail whenever you install msmtp this way.
Comment by Chris Brannon (cmb) - Saturday, 06 November 2010, 18:32 GMT
Maybe this bug report should be re-titled:
[msmtp] should not provide smtp-forwarder?
In any case, I don't see why both packages can't be installed on the
same machine, aside from the smtp-forwarder conflict.
Comment by Giorgio Lando (patroclo7) - Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 19:43 GMT
I have used for ages postfix for local mail delivery and msmtp to send mail by remote smtp servers. I do not use for postfix for remote stuff because it is extremely complex to convince it to use different servers ofr different users.
They coexist simply fine.
Comment by Loui Chang (louipc) - Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 23:36 GMT
Well msmtp providing smtp-forwarder seems perfectly fine, that should not imply that it needs to provide 'sendmail'. If you wanted to provide a sendmail wrapper and be a "drop-in replacement", then the package should provide 'sendmail' rather than a generic 'smtp-forwarder' maybe. Not that it's needed. Any sane program that requires a mailer would have an option to specify a mailer other than sendmail.
Comment by Leonid Isaev (lisaev) - Sunday, 30 January 2011, 22:25 GMT
As Giorgio already said, postfix/sendmail is hard to configure. I also think that it's quite ugly to add user passwords into config file in /etc, in general. msmtp provides a mechanism to create per-user configuration, which is necessary on systems without the FQDN, such as laptops on wifi networks. FWIW, I have both postfix & msmtp coexisting just fine...
Comment by Leonid Isaev (lisaev) - Thursday, 03 February 2011, 17:16 GMT
By the way, why does the title say "[postfix]"? This is the issue with msmtp's PKGBUILD...
Comment by Dale Blount (dale) - Tuesday, 15 March 2011, 18:08 GMT
ssmtp is an alternative smtp-forwarder and does provide /usr/sbin/sendmail...
msmtp should really include /usr/sbin/sendmail as well and conflict with smtp-server IMO
Comment by Greg (dolby) - Tuesday, 15 March 2011, 18:23 GMT
Opened  FS#23287 
Comment by Leonid Isaev (lisaev) - Tuesday, 15 March 2011, 20:10 GMT
I don't think that you can use msmtp to send emails from a cron job, or between users. That's why there must be postfix/exim/... Unless I misunderstand something (please explain if this is the case), it seems as a bad idea to further complicate msmtp: this is a user-space application, whose functionality is included in any modern email client, however, we don't consider these as smtp-forwarders do we.
Comment by Dale Blount (dale) - Tuesday, 15 March 2011, 20:17 GMT
http://msmtp.sourceforge.net/

Sure reads to me like it's an smtp-forwarder. I bet it'll send mail from crond too as long as it's using the sendmail compatible interface...
Comment by Leonid Isaev (lisaev) - Tuesday, 15 March 2011, 20:28 GMT
Yeah, but can msmtp act as a MDA?
Comment by Dale Blount (dale) - Wednesday, 16 March 2011, 00:18 GMT
No, it can't. That's why it's classified as smtp-forwarder and not smtp-server.
Comment by masao (masao) - Wednesday, 01 February 2012, 16:57 GMT
msmtp provides a compatible interface to sendmail to send messages to an other host, but I think you can't use it to send mail between local users.

If you want that msmtp provides nevertheless "smtp-forwarders", you can do an other package, for example "msmtp-sendmail", wich provides a symlink /usr/sbin/sendmail to msmtp.
This package can depend of msmtp package and conflicts with others smtp forwarders. It can provides an other symlink for sendmail manpage, too.

That's like debian do (the debian package is called "msmtp-mta").
Comment by Gaetan Bisson (vesath) - Monday, 19 March 2012, 04:04 GMT
All packages that provide smtp-forwarder but msmtp have a sendmail binary, and hence should conflict with each other.

It is an oddity that msmtp can be installed alongside postfix, and I do not encourage users to install two email systems. If you really want to do so and are unwilling to do a bit of packaging yourself, then your last hope lies within https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/23287 .

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