RFC: Sendmail deprecation ?

[Julian Elischer]

On 13/12/17 9:21 pm, Mike Karels wrote:
> It is clear that there isn't a consensus on a single choice of MTA,
> and that is fine.  Here is a summary of my take on current options
> after reading the discussion to this point:
>
> First, we seem to agree that the target for a default setup is not
> that of an Internet-facing MTA, which requires some thought and
> configuration.  Instead, the target is an originate-only system
> that does either on-box mail delivery or outbound delivery.  At the
> very least, it can deliver the sysadmin emails configured by default.
>
> The options that have been presented:
>
> o Use dma.  That would apparently suffice for some systems, and is already
>    in base.  However, in my opinion, it is missing some capabilities that
>    some sites (including mine) may require:
>      - .forward processing
>      - Its masqerade configuration seems to be too simplistic, e.g.
>        masquerade all or nothing, rather then exempting root and other
>        specified system users.
>      - Some mail clients, e.g. perl packages that we use at $JOB, connect
>        to localhost:25 (or SMTP on some other host) rather than invoking
>        "sendmail" directly.  dma will not support these.
>    In addition, it is not as well integrated into the system.  It wasn't
>    immediately obvious to me how to enable it, until I followed the
>    "See Also" to mailwrapper; I guess I knew that at one time.  It also
>    requires manual configuration of TLS and a certificate if you want to
>    use TLS.
>
> o Use the sendmail in base, configured for submission only.  This is
>    completely integrated and works out of the box.  It has none of the
>    limitations listed for dma.  IIRC, a certificate is generated automatically
>    so that TLS could work with no additional configuration.  Presumably this
>    could be done for dma as well, but it has not been done.
>
> o Use the sendmail in ports.  This is apparently more full-featured, but not
>    as nicely integrated with FreeBSD.  No one has volunteered to resolve this
>    so far.  Or maybe it isn't that hard.  But it wouldn't work "out of the
>    box;" the system woudln't have this MTA available until manually installed.
>
> o  Use some other MTA, e.g. OpenSMTPD.  Of course there are Postfix, Exim
>     and probably others, mostly aimed at full-service MTAs.  I know little
>     about these, but they are not pre-configured.  (OK, I once configured
>     an Exim system and got it to do what was required for a test, but I've
>     blocked it from my mind.)
>
> Another issue that has been brought up:
>
> o It's a bother to remove sendmail to replace it with something else if it
>    is not a package.  I don't understand; isn't it just a matter of putting
>    sendmail_submit_enable="NO" into /etc/rc.conf to be ready to configure
>    something else?  Or are people so short of disk space that they need to
>    remove the binary, config files, etc?
>
> It seems to me that the option that is best-integrated, and which serves
> the needs of the greatest number of systems, is the sendmail in base.  I still
> favor a configuration step that selects one of a small number of MTA choices
> and configures it, but we don't seem to have a framework for doing that now
> if we want something to be working out-of-the box.  Thus, I think that
> removing sendmail from base now would make the system less flexible and
> usable.

This is close to my thinking..
I see no real reason to remove it..
the binary isn't exactly huge by today's standards..
-r-xr-sr-x  1 root  smmsp  696880 Aug 24 03:56 sendmail
[julian at porridge ~/p4/build_inv_10x]$ ls -l `which vim`
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  2389560 Aug 11 21:23 /usr/local/bin/vim
[julian at porridge ~/p4/build_inv_10x]$ ls -l /lib/libc.so.7
-r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  1654264 Aug 24 03:54 /lib/libc.so.7

Currently  it is the most integrated and I've found it reliable.
if it has SSL built in by default we'd be golden.

>
> 		Mike
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