Feature changed by: Michael Foerster (yamaban) Feature #312320, revision 7 Title: don't install postfix by default anymore openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Ludwig Nussel (lnussel) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: postfix slows down system boot and runs on every installation even though it's not actually needed anymore on the average desktop. Even mutt can send mails without local mta nowadays. Therefore we shouldn't install postfix anymore by default. cron may need adjustments to report output of cron jobs via other means such as syslog. Discussion: #1: Ruediger Meier (rudi_m) (2011-05-10 12:52:51) Bad idea. For good reason /usr/sbin/sendmail is a LSB requirement and comes per default with postfix. Usual users expect emails from cron and other daemons and ~/.forward to be respected. How should they collect their cron reports from different machines via syslog? Why should user specific output (maybe x MB of trash every 5 minutes) be logged via syslog at all? Furthermore mailx and other scriptable MUAs should work whithout any arguments per default at least for local receivers. #2: Vitezslav Cizek (vitezslav_cizek) (2011-05-10 23:11:45) Default cron install would require only minor changes to write command output to syslog. (Adding startup option `-m off' to disable e-mail messages and some MTA checks in run-crons script). However, as Ruediger pointed out, I can't imagine a single cron user not installing a MTA back. And personally, I'm not a fan of this feature either. #3: Ludwig Nussel (lnussel) (2011-05-11 08:15:18) Well, personally I couldn't imagine my workstation without an MTA either. I doubt Joe Average would notice though. The mails cron sends by default basically go to /dev/null anyways as the user never reads root's mail. Even if you check the option to send mail to the first created user during install that user wouldn't notice as default gui MUA configs are not set up to check the local spool AFAIK. #4: Bruno Friedmann (bruno_friedmann) (2011-05-17 15:05:12) Average desktop? I've one desktop workstation and postfix is quick to start (compared to other services) I've otherwise 10 servers where I really use postfix. So not a fan of this feature too. + #5: Michael Foerster (yamaban) (2011-05-21 00:15:39) + On most desktops, a start-on-demand MTA would be enough, maybe via (x) + inetd or similar. Some deamons will have to be adjusted, unnecessary + dependencies on MTA's removed, and / or /usr/sbin/sendmail replaced by + a script / binary which does NOT rely on the existence of a full-time- + non-stop-running MTA. + Do-able, but not without investment. For better argumentation there + should be a series of tests be done, best would be in a scripted form, + to be reproduce-able: measure (MEM/CPU/DiskIO,Powerconsumption) over a + pre-determinated time-frame. 1. with standard setup: MTA running 2. + without MTA esp. if during the test a mail is send via a scriptable MUA + (e.g. mailx) + what does stopping MTA save? (Power, startup-time) + just my 2ct. I'm for stopping all non-needed services. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/312320