On 27 May 2001, Ed Robitaille wrote:
> Speaking defensively ;) In lurking in the background, I have the distinct
> impression that as a home user running as 'root' could be a problem were I
> connected to the outside world.
It depends on how you define "problem". A lot of the inherent stability and
security in a Unix-derived system like Linux comes from the fact that regular
user tasks are prevented from gaining full control over the system. Many
programs take this so seriously that they refuse to run as root (or change
their behavior when run as root). You can ignore that and run as the
super-user if you wish, but you're opening a can of worms if you do. That may
be something you're willing to accept. Your call. :-)
> I used 'fetchmail' to pull in mail from my ISP. Fetchmail piped the
> e-mails to 'procmail'. If you operate as strictly as 'root', these 2
> programs are VERY easy to configure and trouble-shoot.
I've never had any problems running them as a user, either. Indeed, they
are primarily user-oriented programs.
I can see where you would run into problems if you were trying to store your
user mail in /var/spool/mail, but as I've already said, don't do that. :-)
> Mutt, once you have it tuned is really a great program. It does use POP to
> pull in mail and it looks like it has hooks that will allow me to possibly
> weed-out incoming mail. I'll soon know.
See if it has a feature to send mail directly to another SMTP server. If
so, you can avoid a lot of hassle by simply sending all mail out through your
ISP.
> Sendmail. It would seem that every Linux distro I know of uses it or or
> supplies it.
Sendmail has a distinct advantage over other MTAs: It can do damn near
anything. Sendmail also has a distinct disadvantage: It can do damn near
anything. This power comes at a price: A configuration file format so complex
it borders on a full-fledged programming language. The M4 configuration system
goes along way towards making this better, but as I've said, it assumes you
are a well-connected host present in the DNS.
Again, I put out a call: Where are all the exim/qmail/postfix advocates
now? They chime in constantly when everything is already working fine, but
now that we come to a situation that Sendmail handles poorly, they are
mysteriously silent.
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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