remove dovecot-postfix from lucid

[Douglas Stanley]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 6:39 AM, Aurélien Naldi
<aurelien.naldi at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Imre Gergely <gimre at narancs.net> wrote:
>>
>> Just my two cents... I would agree on the confusion part of the extra
>> dovecot-postfix.conf config file... It's an attempt to make the servers
>> more user friendly, which I'm not sure is needed... if somebody wants to
>> install/configure/administer a mailserver, that's not really an average
>> user task, the person should know a little bit what he's doing, it
>> shouldn't be "too easy" and integrated and out-of-the-box...
>>
>> It should be clear that you have to mess with config files to set things
>> up and Ubuntu shouldn't make things easier, at least not on servers.
>> Desktop is another story. IMHO.
>
>
> Hi,
>
> not trying to start a flame war here but I really disagree.
>
> Of course, setting up a mailserver requires some understanding but why
> should it require everyone to mess up with a bunch of crypting config
> files? Understanding the big picture and having an idea of how things
> fit together is important, the detail of the syntax of the config
> files isn't (IMHO). I care a lot about educating users and admins but
> I also believe that not being too elitist helps.
>
> Many mail servers serve small groups who just want a simple
> configuration with a few users. What is needed is receiving and
> sending emails, doing some filtering and serving these mails to the
> users. For such use cases, I would rather trust a well-thought default
> configuration than random fiddling with config files after hours of
> reading outdated tutorials. I have been maintaining a mailserver for
> an association over a few years and learned a lot in the course but I
> really wish it had been less painful: documentation was often
> incomplete or outdated, it seems it is getting better though.
>
> Being able to tune things is nice and a requirement for less common
> use cases, but why should it be a mess for the simple systems?
> Maybe I'm being naive here and there is no such thing as a simple mail
> server configuration, but the huge penetration of exchange says at
> least that there is a market for it... I would be much more
> confortable in a world where more workgroup are able to switch to open
> solutions, and this requires making them integrated and easy to set
> up.
>
> Fixing shortcomings in the current implementation seems important but
> please don't stop providing good default configuration and helpers for
> the common needs.
>
> Sorry for the rant, and I want to emphasise that I for one appreciate
> a lot the effort to make this less difficult for non-full-time
> sysadmins!
>
>
> Best regards.
>
> --
> Aurélien Naldi
>
> --
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> ubuntu-server at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server
> More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam

I think we should avoid shipping a package that more or less just
sticks an extra config
file in a non standard place.

If the goal is to make it easier for a new user to configure a
mailserver, then how about
writing some tools to generate a proper config file instead?

How hard would it be to create a more or less "template" config file,
then run a tool
that prompts the user for the desired input, fills out the template
and then puts the
config into the standard place?

Isn't that more or less what happens when dpkg configures postfix anyway? Am I
missing something that would make this task so difficult it's not worth doing?

I would vote for not shipping just an extra (potentially confusing)
config in a package
name that could also possibly confuse people, when there could be a
better way to
make it end user friendly.

Just MHO...

Doug

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