Fw: Postfix, Mutt And No Root Mail?

[Derek Broughton]

Hal Burgiss wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 02, 2007 at 12:28:37PM -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
>> > 
>> > As a new Ubuntu user, one thing I noticed also is the lack of root
>> > mail. Most of this comes from cron, I would bet. I also noticed that
>> > my user crontab also generated no mail. I added a MAILTO=halb to that
>> > one, which got mail back to where I was used to. You might try that
>> > in /etc/crontab if you think the root mail you are missing is a result
>> > of cron runs (I haven't tried that yet).
>>  
>> There's no "root mail" in Ubuntu, by default, because there's no "mail"
>> in Ubuntu - ie, it doesn't install even a local SMTP program.
> 
> I guess so. But even after installing and configuring postfix, mailx
> and various other packages, there still is not the volume of root mail
> that I have seen on other Linuxes (mostly Red Hat based, and which I
> believe is cron related). I am not complaining. On desktops, its a
> good thing IMO. On servers, probably not so good. Later.
> 
I think this is an intentional consequence of deciding a desktop install
shouldn't need an SMTP server. Back when postfix was removed, many of us
complained that it _was_ necessary, because things like cron required it. 
The developers promised that other methods would be used to inform the user
of problems.  I still think it was a bad decision - removing postfix
shouldn't have happened until all components of a standard desktop install
were guaranteed not to generate mail - but for the most part it's working. 
-- 
derek