Ralf Resack writes:
> As I communicate mail over my ISP's mail host, I don't need a MTA and
> therefore removed exim4. This resulted in the following error when
> starting gnus v5.11 in emacs22:
>[...]
> I use (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it) in my
> .gnus. Smtpmail.el itself requires sendmail.el, which caused the error
> at defcustom of sendmail-program as I haven't got sendmail or
> /usr/bin/mail on my system:
>
>
> (defcustom sendmail-program
> (cond
> ((file-exists-p "/usr/sbin/sendmail") "/usr/sbin/sendmail")
> ((file-exists-p "/usr/lib/sendmail") "/usr/lib/sendmail")
> ((file-exists-p "/usr/ucblib/sendmail") "/usr/ucblib/sendmail")
> (t
> (if (not (file-executable-p "/usr/bin/mail"))
> (error "/usr/bin/mail is not executable"))
> "fakemail")) ;In ../etc, to interface to /bin/mail.
> "Program used to send messages."
> :group 'mail
> :type 'file)
>[...]
> So, I assume this was modified by Debian.
You are right. The rationale is given in the patch:
,----
| Patch: avoid-fakemail-mail-loss.diff
| Author: Rob Browning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| Added-by: Rob Browning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
|
| This fix attempts to avoid a situation where Emacs can silently lose
| mail. This can occur if sendmail.el (at least) falls back to
| fakemail, and the underlying binary (MAIL_PROGRAM_NAME) that
| fakemail is configured to use doesn't exist. Unless
| mail-interactive is true, Emacs won't wait for the mailer and so
| won't know that fakemail failed.
`----
Of course it would be better if fakemail was fixed to not lose mail.
> I removed both lines, which
> works for me. I'm wondering about this error message. If necessary,
> you might change it also to:
>
> (if (not (file-executable-p "/usr/bin/mail"))
> (message "/usr/bin/mail is not executable"))
>
> This gives the user the information without interrupting loading
> gnus. I hope, this is helpful.
Yes, but such messages easily go by unnoticed, so I'm not certain this
would be better than the bailing out which is done now. Note that
your system configuration (lacking an MTA) is rather unusual.
Anyway, you can easily avoid that by setting sendmail-program in your
.emacs. The value does not matter, since you are not using it anyway,
so
(setq sendmail-program "/bin/false")
would be a good candidate.
Kind Regards,
Sven
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