Reasons for ikeeping an MTA (was Re: Ubuntu is under attack)

[Derek Broughton]

Matthew Garrett wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 11:48:08AM -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:
> 
>> Some have said that we don't need an MTA _just_ for cron, but the fact is
>> that cron is one specific app that _is_ installed and needs to be able to
>> send mail.  Any app that needs to send mail also needs to either force a
>> dependency on _an_ MTA or have an alternative method of notifying a user.
>> The real error here is that cron can be installed in such a way that it
>> _doesn't_ provide any notification.  If that's fixed in a way that
>> doesn't involve an MTA some people are going to be annoyed, but it would
>> at least be consistent.
> 
> Right. So the real issue here isn't there's a missing MTA, but that
> notification isn't happening. 

I think that's right.  I'm still not convinced another notification system
is better than email and properly configuring an MTA, though.
-- 
derek