I don't need an MTA
Nuno Magalhães
I use webmail, i'm not running a mail server. At most i'd use an MUA
to comunicate with whichever mail services i use. However, i must have
exim4 installed. How can i work around this? Regardless of how much
resources it requires i find it irritating. The real nudge is having
"Starting MTA: " lagging by boot by half a minute or so.
Oddly enough running grep exim * on /var/log only returns matches in
the popularity contest, but not in dmesg.
Can i have a regular desktop Debian without an MTA?
Nuno Magalhães
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Steve Kemp
> How can i work around this? Regardless of how much
> resources it requires i find it irritating. The real nudge is having
> "Starting MTA: " lagging by boot by half a minute or so.
You need one, as far as the system is concerned, to ensure
that you have cronjob mail, etc, going to the correct local user.
To avoid having exim4 running you could look at some of the other
MTAs which are much more lightweight - including my own "skxmail":
http://blog.steve.org.uk/tags/skxmail/
Generally you can find a list via:
apt-cache search mail-transport-agent
> Can i have a regular desktop Debian without an MTA?
No. Not without creating your own package which provides
"mail-transport-agent" - otherwise things like cron will fail
to be installable. But you can install a leightweight one, or
simply install exim4 but curtail it such that it doesn't run:
update-rc.d -f exim4 remove
Steve
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Ron Johnson
> Greetings.
>
> I use webmail, i'm not running a mail server. At most i'd use an MUA
> to comunicate with whichever mail services i use. However, i must have
> exim4 installed. How can i work around this? Regardless of how much
> resources it requires i find it irritating. The real nudge is having
> "Starting MTA: " lagging by boot by half a minute or so.
That's the problem, not the fact that you have exim. It's
misconfigured somehow. (But since I don't use exim, I couldn't tell
you how to diagnose the problem.)
> Oddly enough running grep exim * on /var/log only returns matches in
> the popularity contest, but not in dmesg.
>
> Can i have a regular desktop Debian without an MTA?
Desktop? Yes.
Linux? No.
--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA
"I am not surprised, for we live long and are celebrated poopers."
Eugene V. Lyubimkin
> On 01/31/2009 03:58 PM, Nuno Magalhães wrote:
>> Can i have a regular desktop Debian without an MTA?
>
>
Please, don't overestimate :) Base system is also Linux, though it doesn't contain any MTA
for the obvious reasons.
--
Eugene V. Lyubimkin aka JackYF, JID: jackyf.devel(maildog)gmail.com
C++/Perl developer, Debian Maintainer
Florian Kulzer
> On 01/31/2009 03:58 PM, Nuno Magalhães wrote:
>> Greetings.
>>
>> I use webmail, i'm not running a mail server. At most i'd use an MUA
>> to comunicate with whichever mail services i use. However, i must have
>> exim4 installed. How can i work around this? Regardless of how much
>> resources it requires i find it irritating. The real nudge is having
>> "Starting MTA: " lagging by boot by half a minute or so.
>
> That's the problem, not the fact that you have exim. It's misconfigured
> somehow. (But since I don't use exim, I couldn't tell you how to
> diagnose the problem.)
Most likely, the delay can be avoided by choosing "Keep number of
DNS-queries minimal" in the configuration dialog. (dpkg-reconfigure
exim4-config)
--
Regards, | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
Florian |
Nate Bargmann
> Can i have a regular desktop Debian without an MTA?
Difficult, but try the esmtp package. It is very light weight and only
runs when actually needed.
- Nate >>
--
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possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true."
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Nuno Magalhães
For now i'll try restraining DNS. Whenever the loss of mouse pointer
"forces" me to reboot again i'll see it it works :) If not, either
getting it out of the init scripts o switching to another MTA.
I like the client/server approach but this MTA stuff is kind of
annoying for regular desktop use. Is there a bogus MTA? One that'll
pretend to be one and accept stuff from its clients but basically
/dev/null everything?
Thanks again.
Nuno Magalhães
Aneurin Price
> Thanks for the suggestions.
>
> For now i'll try restraining DNS. Whenever the loss of mouse pointer
> "forces" me to reboot again i'll see it it works :) If not, either
> getting it out of the init scripts o switching to another MTA.
>
> I like the client/server approach but this MTA stuff is kind of
> annoying for regular desktop use. Is there a bogus MTA? One that'll
> pretend to be one and accept stuff from its clients but basically
> /dev/null everything?
>
I've not found one in a quick look (you'd think 'nullmailer' might fit the bill,
with a name like that, but you'd be wrong).
I'm curious however what it is you have installed that depends on exim, or the
mail-transport-agent virtual package. I have no MTA installed on my machine, and
no breakages.
Would you mind posting the output of 'aptitude why mail-transfer-agent' or
'aptitude why exim', whichever is more enlightening?
Nye
Ron Johnson
> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:04 AM, Nuno Magalhães <nunoma...@eu.ipp.pt> wrote:
>> Thanks for the suggestions.
>>
>> For now i'll try restraining DNS. Whenever the loss of mouse pointer
>> "forces" me to reboot again i'll see it it works :) If not, either
>> getting it out of the init scripts o switching to another MTA.
>>
>> I like the client/server approach but this MTA stuff is kind of
>> annoying for regular desktop use. Is there a bogus MTA? One that'll
>> pretend to be one and accept stuff from its clients but basically
>> /dev/null everything?
>>
>
> I've not found one in a quick look (you'd think 'nullmailer' might fit the bill,
> with a name like that, but you'd be wrong).
>
> I'm curious however what it is you have installed that depends on exim, or the
> mail-transport-agent virtual package. I have no MTA installed on my machine, and
> no breakages.
>
> Would you mind posting the output of 'aptitude why mail-transfer-agent' or
> 'aptitude why exim', whichever is more enlightening?
How do you get system mail from cron?
--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA
"I am not surprised, for we live long and are celebrated poopers."
Martin
> I like the client/server approach but this MTA stuff is kind of
> annoying for regular desktop use. Is there a bogus MTA? One that'll
> pretend to be one and accept stuff from its clients but basically
> /dev/null everything?
I like nullmailer,
since you don't seem to care: no (real) setup required just have the
mail address you want important system messages to be sent to in
/etc/nullmailer/adminaddr (or similiar after installing you'll find
it)
hth
martin
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John Hasler
> I'm curious however what it is you have installed that depends on exim,
> or the mail-transport-agent virtual package.
bsd-mailx is standard and depends on mail-transport-agent. You can, of
course, remove bsd-mailx though this anti-MTA prejudice baffles me.
--
John Hasler
Nuno Magalhães
> 'aptitude why exim', whichever is more enlightening?
$ aptitude why mail-transport-agent
i lsb Depends lsb-core
i A lsb-core Depends exim4 | mail-transport-agent
Same results if i why on exim4. I assume lsb includes cron and other
base-level tools that require mail functionality. Is this "all" that
is depending on the MTA in my system? What's the equivalent apt
command btw? show and showpkg don't seem to apply only to installed
packages.
As far as i can tell from locate and du, the whole MTA-stuff uses less
than 2MB, so i guess fixing the boot delay exim causes/d would be my
main concern. I guess having an MTA is a side-effect of the whole
client/server thing; prejucide or not it's an opinion.
Thanks for the help.
Nuno Magalhães
John Hasler
> I assume lsb includes cron and other base-level tools that require mail
> functionality.
No. Lsb is an "extra" package that you almost certainly don't need unless
you are running LSB-compliant closed-source software. LSB stands for
"Linux Standard Base". Google it.
> Is this "all" that is depending on the MTA in my system?
Why don't you try to remove the MTA and see what complains?
--
John Hasler
Ron Johnson
[snip]
> main concern. I guess having an MTA is a side-effect of the whole
> client/server thing; prejucide or not it's an opinion.
That's Windows-think to say whether a *computer* s a client or
server. Such a mindset needs to be banished to get full use out of
your machine.
In the Unix world, *applications* are client or server. The
Operating System itself is fully capable of running both client and
server apps at the same time.
--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA
"I am not surprised, for we live long and are celebrated poopers."
Tzafrir Cohen
> Nuno writes:
> > I assume lsb includes cron and other base-level tools that require mail
> > functionality.
>
> No. Lsb is an "extra" package that you almost certainly don't need unless
> you are running LSB-compliant closed-source software. LSB stands for
> "Linux Standard Base". Google it.
'aptitude rdepends lsb-base' gives results such as avahi-daemon,
apache2.2-common, bittorrent, dbus, x11-common, dhcpbd and even our own
exim4 .
More and more init script, for instance, use /lib/lsb/init-functions .
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Jochen Schulz
>> Would you mind posting the output of 'aptitude why mail-transfer-agent' or
>> 'aptitude why exim', whichever is more enlightening?
>
> $ aptitude why mail-transport-agent
> i lsb Depends lsb-core
> i A lsb-core Depends exim4 | mail-transport-agent
Thanks a lot for showing this command, I didn't knew aptitude's 'why'
action yet. Very useful!
J.
--
When I am doing sex I wonder if my emotions can be detected by alien
civilisations.
[Agree] [Disagree]
<http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html>
Jerry Stuckle
> On 01/31/2009 09:24 PM, Nuno Magalhães wrote:
> [snip]
>> main concern. I guess having an MTA is a side-effect of the whole
>> client/server thing; prejucide or not it's an opinion.
>
> That's Windows-think to say whether a *computer* s a client or server.
> Such a mindset needs to be banished to get full use out of your machine.
>
> In the Unix world, *applications* are client or server. The Operating
> System itself is fully capable of running both client and server apps at
> the same time.
>
No, whether a machine is a client or a server existed long before either
Windows or Unix existed. It is Linux users who are trying to redefine
terms used that way for over 40 years.
John Hasler
> No. Lsb is an "extra" package that you almost certainly don't need unless
> you are running LSB-compliant closed-source software. LSB stands for
> "Linux Standard Base". Google it.
Tzafrir Cohen writes:
> 'aptitude rdepends lsb-base' gives results such as avahi-daemon,
> apache2.2-common, bittorrent, dbus, x11-common, dhcpbd and even our own
> exim4 .
Lsb and lsb-base are two different packages:
Package: lsb-base
Priority: required
Section: misc
Installed-Size: 72
Maintainer: Chris Lawrence <lawr...@debian.org>
Architecture: all
Source: lsb
Version: 3.2-20
Replaces: lsb (<< 2.0-6), lsb-core (<< 2.0-6)
Depends: sed, ncurses-bin
Conflicts: lsb (<< 2.0-6), lsb-core (<< 2.0-6)
Filename: pool/main/l/lsb/lsb-base_3.2-20_all.deb
Size: 19506
MD5sum: 40e8abbcba50297be6b2b271b3288e6e
SHA1: 2d5e29a6dd47b85c52154dac1c0a4d1c708df341
SHA256: eca9b12ceb6749b1765535b5e0216d85e424cd72e93f8b2ad6bee4682ecc505a
Description: Linux Standard Base 3.2 init script functionality
The Linux Standard Base (http://www.linuxbase.org/) is a standard
core system that third-party applications written for Linux can
depend upon.
.
This package only includes the init-functions shell library, which
may be used by other packages' initialization scripts for console
logging and other purposes.
> More and more init script, for instance, use /lib/lsb/init-functions .
Which is the only thing that lsb-base contains.
--
John Hasler
Martin Kraus
> Ron Johnson wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> main concern. I guess having an MTA is a side-effect of the whole
>>> client/server thing; prejucide or not it's an opinion.
>>
>> That's Windows-think to say whether a *computer* s a client or server.
>> Such a mindset needs to be banished to get full use out of your
>> machine.
>>
>> In the Unix world, *applications* are client or server. The Operating
>> System itself is fully capable of running both client and server apps
>> at the same time.
>>
>
> No, whether a machine is a client or a server existed long before either
> Windows or Unix existed. It is Linux users who are trying to redefine
> terms used that way for over 40 years.
actually terms client and server do not correspond to computers but to
applications running on those computers. server is a program(usually daemon)
providing a service to a client application. referring to a computer as a
server just means that it is a computer expected to run server applications to
provide services to client applications. it doesn't mean that you can't run a
web browser on a server computer. and therefore it doesn't mean you can't run
a server application on your notebook, think about syslog, print server etc.
mk
Nuno Magalhães
home since Woody and even though i'm not afraid of the command prompt
i don't consider myself a power-user either (i'll get there). The
point being yes, i know what clients and servers are and agree with
Martin Kraus' definition, which applies also to any other OS btw.
The original question wasn't cultural but technical though. :)
Anyone running X is running a server even though a "desktop machine"
is usualy not a "server machine". Same for CUPS and i'll soon install
nginx on my desktop to fiddle around with php. Apache is too big...
but maybe i'll install it as well, it's used a lot... oh and mysql and
sqlite, the latter not being a server though. I have nginx+sqlite in
another debian machine, a regular "desktop machine" acting as a
"server machine", but it has a noisy fan and it's kinda sluggish; and
my desktop is more than capable of handling the load.
Back to the original subject...
The way i see it, most "regular users" either use webmail, or an MUA
to conenct to webmail accounts. Technicaly speaking, i think there
should be a way to configure mail-dependant programs to either use an
MTA or use a regular syslog or similar, and let the admin decide how
s/he wants to keep track. Granted exim isn't doing much on my system
and is small, i'm picky and i don't like having packages i don't
use/need. I'm allergic to gnome et-all for the same reasons.
Back to exim, if i have X i have x11-common (and i also have avahi)
therefore i apaprently must have lsb, which i believe is a metapackage
for lsb-* (i have base, core, cxx, etc installed). So apaprently i
can't just remove the MTA. However, following John Hasler's suggestion
i tried removing exim just to see:
$ apt-get remove exim4
[...]
The following packages will be REMOVED:
exim4
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 70 not upgraded.
After this operation, 73.7kB disk space will be freed.
Didn't Y it (and got the same results for purge), but what exactly to
i have depending on it after all?
>> Oddly enough running grep exim * on /var/log only returns matches in
>> the popularity contest, but not in dmesg.
Osamu Aoki:
> I do not get what you are at?
I assumed dmesg would have some reference to exim, hence the grep.
dmesg |grep xim returned nil as well.
> Your problem was DNS look up. Please address the real problem but do not kill the messanger :-)
Yeah i oughta look into that and i think it lies with the router, but
that would be another post. I don't wanna kill it, just fire it ;)
For now i'll stick with Florian Kulzer's suggestion of reducing DNS,
since that's the main issue for me (slow booting).
Thanks for the input :)
Nuno Magalhães
Osamu Aoki
On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 09:58:01PM +0000, Nuno Magalhães wrote:
> Greetings.
>
> I use webmail, i'm not running a mail server. At most i'd use an MUA
> to comunicate with whichever mail services i use. However, i must have
> exim4 installed. How can i work around this? Regardless of how much
> resources it requires i find it irritating. The real nudge is having
> "Starting MTA: " lagging by boot by half a minute or so.
It is well known problem which you can avoid by reconfiguring exim4.
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config
When asked:
Keep number of DNS-queries minimal (Dial-on-Demand)?
Answer "YES" if you are not connected to insternet when booting.
> Oddly enough running grep exim * on /var/log only returns matches in
> the popularity contest, but not in dmesg.
I do not get what you are at?
> Can i have a regular desktop Debian without an MTA?
Anything is possible ... but I recommend you not to do this. It is not
worth your effort.
Your problem was DNS look up. Please address the real problem but do
not kill the messanger :-)
Osamu
pierpaolo
The way i see it, most "regular users" either use webmail, or an MUA
to conenct to webmail accounts. Technicaly speaking, i think there
should be a way to configure mail-dependant programs to either use an
MTA or use a regular syslog or similar, and let the admin decide how
s/he wants to keep track. Granted exim isn't doing much on my system
and is small, i'm picky and i don't like having packages i don't
use/need. I'm allergic to gnome et-all for the same reasons.
And anacron and cron simply recommend a mta! The real issue - however that seems to me - is with at... (and drupal6 for those needing it...)
pierpaolo@piccolino:~$ apt-cache showpkg at
Package: at
Versions:
3.1.10.2 (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.it.debian.org_debian_dists_lenny_main_binary-amd64_Packages) (/var/lib/dpkg/status)
Description Language:
File: /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.it.debian.org_debian_dists_lenny_main_binary-amd64_Packages
MD5: 97e204a9f4ad8c681dbd54ec7c505251
Description Language: it
File: /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.it.debian.org_debian_dists_lenny_main_i18n_Translation-it
MD5: 97e204a9f4ad8c681dbd54ec7c505251
Reverse Depends:
mirror,at
lsb-core,at
libschedule-at-perl,at
libgpeschedule0,at
gpe-announce,at
gnome-schedule,at
devscripts,at
Dependencies:
3.1.10.2 - libc6 (2 2.7-1) libpam0g (2 0.99.7.1) exim4 (16 (null)) mail-transport-agent (0 (null)) lsb-base (2 3.0-10)
Osamu Aoki
On Sun, Feb 01, 2009 at 03:21:24PM +0000, Nuno Magalhães wrote:
...
> Back to exim, if i have X i have x11-common (and i also have avahi)
> therefore i apaprently must have lsb, which i believe is a metapackage
> for lsb-* (i have base, core, cxx, etc installed). So apaprently i
> can't just remove the MTA. However, following John Hasler's suggestion
> i tried removing exim just to see:
>
> $ apt-get remove exim4
> [...]
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
> exim4
> 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 70 not upgraded.
> After this operation, 73.7kB disk space will be freed.
Of couse.... if you are using lenny or etch, exim4 is :
Description: metapackage to ease Exim MTA (v4) installation
Exim (v4) is a mail transport agent. exim4 is the metapackage depending on the
essential components for a basic exim4 installation.
This means you can remove it :-) (Suggestion was right one for sarge, I guess.)
To kill REAL exim4, kill one of these on your system:
exim4-daemon-light
exim4-daemon-heavy
exim4-daemon-custom
This explains why.
> >> Oddly enough running grep exim * on /var/log only returns matches in
> >> the popularity contest, but not in dmesg.
>
> Osamu Aoki:
> > I do not get what you are at?
>
> I assumed dmesg would have some reference to exim, hence the grep.
> dmesg |grep xim returned nil as well.
dmesg is kernel activity... so no wonder.
> > Your problem was DNS look up. Please address the real problem but do not kill the messanger :-)
> Yeah i oughta look into that and i think it lies with the router, but
> that would be another post. I don't wanna kill it, just fire it ;)
Are you conected via wifi? Then your system's network may not be available
when exim4 was started.
> For now i'll stick with Florian Kulzer's suggestion of reducing DNS,
> since that's the main issue for me (slow booting).
Smart move :-)
Jerry Stuckle
I never said server machines can't run client applications. But the
term "server" has always referred to machines who's main purpose is to
provide services to other machines (clients).
As I said - it has been that way for the more than 40 years I've been
involved in computers - dating way back to arpanet and before. And it's
Linux users who are attempting to redefine the term to what they want it
to mean.
Ron Johnson
[snip]
>
> I never said server machines can't run client applications. But the
> term "server" has always referred to machines who's main purpose is to
> provide services to other machines (clients).
>
> As I said - it has been that way for the more than 40 years I've been
> involved in computers - dating way back to arpanet and before. And it's
> Linux users who are attempting to redefine the term to what they want it
> to mean.
The Sun 3/280 rack-mount server ran the same OS as the 3/60 pizza
box. But they could *do* the same things.
Even if your SFF box "only" has a 100GB disk, 1GB RAM and a 1-core
32-bit CPU, that's still not-to-long-ago's server-class specs, and
*definitely* *can* run exim4-daemon-light without breaking a sweat.
--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA
"I am not surprised, for we live long and are celebrated poopers."
Alex Samad
[snip]
>
> For now i'll stick with Florian Kulzer's suggestion of reducing DNS,
> since that's the main issue for me (slow booting).
if its a start up problem, and you are not really using the mta why not
go
update-rc.d -f exim4 remove
this will take it out of the startup process. if you don't send
outbound mail (nor receive mail) then you will be okay, local mail (from
cron and such ) use sendmail (or equiv application) to send local mail,
try it go
/etc/init.d/exim4 stop
mutt root
you will see mail arrive at roots email. All that happens during boot up
is the deamon is started
Alex
>
> Thanks for the input :)
> Nuno Magalhães
>
>
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>
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Daniel Burrows
> > Would you mind posting the output of 'aptitude why mail-transfer-agent' or
> > 'aptitude why exim', whichever is more enlightening?
>
> $ aptitude why mail-transport-agent
> i lsb Depends lsb-core
> i A lsb-core Depends exim4 | mail-transport-agent
>
> Same results if i why on exim4. I assume lsb includes cron and other
> base-level tools that require mail functionality. Is this "all" that
> is depending on the MTA in my system? What's the equivalent apt
> command btw? show and showpkg don't seem to apply only to installed
> packages.
If you add "-v", you'll get a list of all the packages that depend
on m-t-a -- including packages that aren't installed, although installed
chains should be listed first. You could also do
$ aptitude search '?depends(mail-transport-agent)'
Daniel
Daniel Burrows
> $ aptitude search '?depends(mail-transport-agent)'
Sorry, that should be
$ aptitude search '?installed?depends(?name(^mail-transport-agent$))'
to restrict it to installed packages and to make extra-sure nothing
else sneaks in.
Nuno Magalhães
>
> $ aptitude search '?installed?depends(?name(^mail-transport-agent$))'
>
> to restrict it to installed packages and to make extra-sure nothing
> else sneaks in.
Before i saw your second post i ran:
$ aptitude search '?depends(mail-transport-agent)' |grep ^i
i A at - Delayed job execution and batch processing
i A bsd-mailx - A simple mail user agent
i A lsb-core - Linux Standard Base 3.2 core support packa
same results. :)
Nuno Magalhães
Aneurin Price
> On 01/31/2009 07:28 PM, Aneurin Price wrote:
>>
...
>>
>> I'm curious however what it is you have installed that depends on exim, or
>> the
>> mail-transport-agent virtual package. I have no MTA installed on my
>> machine, and
>> no breakages.
>>
>> Would you mind posting the output of 'aptitude why mail-transfer-agent' or
>> 'aptitude why exim', whichever is more enlightening?
>
> How do you get system mail from cron?
>
I don't. I have nothing run by cron whose output I care about even slightly
:P. It's mostly things like updatedb and prelink.
I have one machine with a real MTA configured on it, and a 'proper' mail
config, and I don't believe I've had a single system mail worth reading in
years. This would be different if I were running unattended servers like
apache or postgres, obviously, but I try to keep my main desktop as
lightweight as possible.
Nye
Preston Boyington
<snipped>
> Can i have a regular desktop Debian without an MTA?
>
yes. install 'nullmailer' via aptitude. i use it on my laptops.
(haven't read all the posts yet, so someone might have already suggested
this)
Preston
--
Arrant Drivel - really, it's just trash...
http://www.arrantdrivel.com/
Where the road takes me - a highwayman’s perspective
http://www.prestonboyington.com/