/dev/chat - 2013-10-03 (page 1 of 2)

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1:54 AM

@slm if you know of a tool for the sound thing let me know, I'd like a cleaner way of doing it.

10 hours later…

12:04 PM

Hey! Anyone active?

@Caleb @slm @all Is Apache by default available on Linux? Or do we need to install ? Because one of my colleagues has been asked to create a php development environment on Linux machine from his computer(windows) through putty. How to check whether it is already installed?

@Appu That's a horribly vague question. No Apache isn't installed by default on all Linux's, but it is almost always AVAILABLE. What you need to do will depend on your Linux distribution and how it handles software packages. You should do some basic research on how to install and remove software packages in your Linux distribution, then move on to how that distribution handles Apache.

12:31 PM

@Caleb Sorry, I knew this is vague, but I have no other go as he was compelled to do so by the management though he is unaware of linux and so am I. He is unable to ask because he doesn't have enough rep. BTW that linux version is redhat 6.0. Can you please say how to check whether it is already installed?

@Appu - step 1 find out what distro of linux you're using. You could try lsb_release -a at a prompt. Step 2 Google for "how to install apache" and the distros name. There should be a wealth of results to search and isn't worth asking here.

@Appu - use the power of google, you're wasting our time here: google.com/…

@Appu - the 1st result is what you want

techotopia.com/index.php/Configuring_an_RHEL_6_Based_Web_Server

12:50 PM

your welcome?

@slm thanks and sorry. I knew the basic SO rules, I did some search, but because I lack basic linux skills, I am unable to guide him with what I have searched. Time constraint was also a factor.

@Appu - I'm busting your chops. But now you know too. That tutorial shows step by step what to do.

1:21 PM

@slm I was explaining the reason why I asked here such a question. I didn't mean that you have to help me again. and yeah, that tutorial seems good.

@Appu - OK.

2:05 PM

o/

2:52 PM

@Appu FYI, you don't need any rep to ask a question. You don't even need an account.

just so everybody know... they plan to include DRM into the HTML5 standard... chn.ge/1hntj5j

@derobert I found it when I asked him to come here. He is in this room itself. Murala. I thought he should have rep like SO.

@Appu Chat.SE rep works by adding up rep on all sites. So he should have at least as much rep as he has on SO.

And while you need rep to post in chat, you don't need it to ask a question on the main site

@Appu you can also ask a mod to allow a new user to post in a specific chatroom. Otherwise, they need a minimum of 20 to chat.

They can always ask questions though

And that should be the first step, before chat

Why would an underscore need to be escaped in a regex?

1

Q: Regular expression in bash script

This is my first time bash scripting so I'm probably making an easy mistake. Basically, I'm trying to write a script that gets the groups of a user, and if they are in a certain group, it will log that accordingly. Evidently there will be more functionality, but there's no point building that wh...

bash scripting regular-expression bash-script

It seems like a new thing. I have the same experience on bash 4.2 but others on 4.1 do not (see the comments)

3:30 PM

What do we do with this Q?

3

Q: What makes a distribution GNU and are there Linux distributions, that are not GNU?

So GNU/Linux is an operation system, consisting of several programs at a minimum: Linux kenel, gcc, gnu-binutils, Gnome desktop, etc. What makes a Linux distribution GNU? Is it the tools, with which the kernel was compiled? Is it the tools, with which the distribution is shipped? Do there exist...

linux distros gnu

I voted to close it as a duplicate of this: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/90883/…

so far 3 have agreed with that. But it has a lot of problems, being a dup. is only one of them. I commented to this effect as well...."
Realize this is all IMO: for one thing, this Q is not really a good fit for the site in it's current form. 2, there are several Q's on the site that touch on this, rather than spend time pointing them all out I linked to that Q's since it felt like the one that was most duplicate to this. Even though it's the contrapositive of this Q. It's overly broad, and opens itself to too much opinion."

@slm dunno, the basic question is answerable:

are there any fully functional, desktop operating systems, that are Linux based but not GNU?

No.

Can there be such systems is a different question but not what is being asked

First bit is a dupe though, yes

Why is it a duplicate? I think it is completely the opposite.

@Kartik this bit is either dupe or too broad or too easy to look up or just generally a bad q:

What makes a Linux distribution GNU? Is it the tools, with which the kernel was compiled? Is it the tools, with which the distribution is shipped?

greetings

hi

3:41 PM

re-freshing up myself on scripting, you?

@terdon I assume you've seen my answer. I almost filed a bug report before noticing that :-(

@terdon - so slash needs to be escaped, wtf?

Yup and upvoted

It makes sense I guess, in a char class '-' means range

so \-_ means from \ to _

@slm I voted for primarily opinion based.

lol, what are the characters between \ and _?

3:48 PM

So, either it interprets that using the character codes or it carps

@Braiam a n d :)

@Braiam my answer lists them. At least for ASCII. Depends on your locale, though

In en_US.UTF8, there apparently aren't any, or maybe _ comes before \.

@derobert - I hate Q's like that, there are literally 5 reasons to close it

We just need a fifth person with his/her fifth reason.

there you go, marked as unclear (which is true)

We should upvote that regex question though, its good to know

thanks

those Q's do nothing for the site, but take away

if asked more narrowly it's a top 1000 though, so it's a fine line

@derobert - nice detective work on the regex Q. I just told everyone I work with that deals w/ regex about it, no one was aware of that either. I guess no one ever tried to do a range between \-_

good catch though

4:00 PM

@terdon ¬_¬

4:29 PM

hi all

@slm which one? regex or GNU's?

@Braiam I'm pretty sure @slm is talking about the GNU question that we closed

4:48 PM

Dammit, I hate people who downvote without checking

0

Q: Keeping sudo authentication with gnome-terminal (zsh)

Can sudo sessions be shared across tabs of gnome-terminal, so that once I use sudo in one tab, I won't have to reenter my password every time I open another tab and use sudo?

zsh gnome-terminal

5:19 PM

@Braiam The GNU type, where they aren't explicitly asking something

@derobert @terdon Thanks :)

@terdon - this is how a downvote can completely derail a Q, and create a lot of negativity that's useless. This was my logic with our Gilles conv. the other day. The problem is that we're all wired that down is bad. Bad things carry more weight with us than positive.

5:35 PM

@slm in some cases it is necesary meta.askubuntu.com/q/7195/169736

5:53 PM

@slm downvoting can be perfectly valid. This particular one was a case of shooting from the hip accompanied by an undeserved snarky comment.

I have to say, I don't tend to downvote new users unless they've done something particularly egregious. At least not before letting them know what's wrong. People who've been around a while and should understand the rules I am perfectly willing to downvote.

6:06 PM

@terdon agreed.

@terdon would you downvote this kind of question:

-1

Q: Wireless does not work

I shut down my computer and turned it back on, and can't use my wireless. My Ethernet works fine. How do I fix it?

@Braiam yes,OK, probably. But I would leave a message explaining why. This is egregious, the OP made absolutely no effort to solve.

Still, thinks are different on AU (one of the reasons I don't participate much). Since it is an official part of Canonical, people have the right to ask such crap I guess.

AU is the support forum of Canonical

That is so wrong by the way...

supposedly not, but indeed, the questions asked are such a crap...

@Braiam it is, officially, that's why it is a part of the Canonical website

and the most amusing fact is that someone answered, and it worked!

@terdon meta.askubuntu.com/a/1353/169736

6:14 PM

shit without even knowing the card tyoe... lucky bastard :)

@Braiam yeah but AU is directly linked to from the to bar of the canonical webpage

this means that people come to it from canonical rather than from SE and you have people paid to be on the site and answer questions. It is a completely dfferent situation

For example:

Jorge Castro, Ann Arbor, MI

20.7k 55 242 464

unity 11.04 juju installation 10.10 11.10 gnome

So, obviously, you'll get a lot more users who have no idea what SE is and how to behave

yeah, the exposure of AU is too darn ridiculous... and at some time, we get users being directed from the bug reporting tools

@Braiam - well written answer. I'm starting to think that there isn't really a right/wrong answer. The sites are made up of different minded individuals so some of us will downvote, others will engage and try to help fix. There are times where each of these methods works. So I guess that the beauty of the SE platform.

AU is turning into SU to me

@slm in what way?

@terdon - the SU comment?

ya

6:22 PM

@terdon - more rough less diamonds

they are there but awful lot more friction to finding them. We've discussed SU before.

Ah, true

The difference for me is that on SU you get a lot more aggresive voting/constructive criticism

I give ppl a lot of credit that are willing to subject themselves to it on SU, the fact that canonical has to pay ppl is good/bad in my mind

There is a hard core of very knowledgeable users who take the time to improve things

There is also a sort of clique effect. Most of the high rep users know each other from chat or Q&As and we ted to have an active meta and chat rooms. That helps

through true be told, if you find a good well asked question in AU, is sure you get lots of upvotes... hardware and boot isues is a pain in the back and are normally bad questions

@terdon sorry, clique effect?

Anyway, all this started because I saw a question asking something I'd solved last week that was downvoted by some one mistakenly claiming that one problem did not exists and the other was unsolvable. That annoyed me. Perhaps too much :)

6:27 PM

@terdon - at least schaiba appologized

@slm indeed he did.

hopefully it will stay with him the next time

I have no hard feelings against him (hope he doesn't against me).

i didn't think he did

@terdon "hope"* ;)

6:28 PM

@Braiam by clique effect, I mean that the high rep users know each other and tend to trust one another's answers and vote patterns

he was just adamant that something worked a certain way, that's usually a troubled position to take

@Braiam thanks :)

we're like that here i would say

@slm much more so

I mean that that clique (which has some ugly connotations I don't necessarily want to imply here) is actually a good thing for the site.

You often get random questions posted in chat by high rep users asking if anyone else knows the answer.

@slm also, you may notice that I've been way more active here than on SU recently for the same reasons you mention. I much prefer the ambiance here.

However, we're MUCH smaller and it is bound to change if we start getting many more questions. At the moment, most of the regulars probably read every single question.

And I'll get to be a non diamon mod here very soon, I'm at >9000 :)

btw, this Life Hacking is interesting

1 hour later…

8:02 PM

0

Q: How does the Linux kernel's scheduler work?

I want a comprehensive overview in unlimited detail on every step of the booting process of Linux, from bootloader to pointer on my Gnome/X GUI. I tried the source, but it's messy, and I do not know where to begin(I would like a sort of bulleted list, or some coverage of this in detail, like X s...

linux boot process scheduling

and I would like a pony...

8:15 PM

no, you want a pink unicorn @terdon

@Braiam would a green one do?

8:31 PM

@Gilles I was reading the pure GNU/Hurd question and it made me wonder whether there is such a thing as GNU/Unix, do you know?

@terdon yes, GNU/Linux

But I mean using the Unix kernel which, if I understand correctly is not the same as the Linux one

there's also a GNU/kFreeBSD

@terdon there is no such thing as “the Unix kernel”

OK, there's my problem then

So what does a Unix system run as a kernel?

unless you mean the historical AT&T kernel, in which case, I don't think GNU tools have been ported to such old systems

@terdon its kernel

it's like asking for “the car engine”

there are many different types of car engines

8:38 PM

yes, and volvo uses a particular type

@terdon no, Volvo uses many different types in different models

Ah, OK, yes, each Unix flavor has its own kernel

that's the main difference between them

each unix flavor and version has its own kernel

and its own everything

sometimes the X from version U is quasi-identical from the X from version V

OK, but a lot of these 'everythings' could be replaced by GNU tools right?

@terdon where GNU tools exist, yes

8:39 PM

which, I guess, is exactly what they've done with GNU/kfreeBSD

cool, thanks

@terdon GNU/kFreeBSD isn't just GNU and the FreeBSD kernel, there are a few FreeBSD core tools, and some non-GNU non-FreeBSD stuff like, say, X.org for X11

OK, but it would qualify as GNU/UNIX inasmuch as freeBSD qualifies as UNIX right?

@terdon FreeBSD qualifies as much as Unix as Linux does

Not enough then.

I may have made a mistake earlier: when GNU tools started, wasn't there still a fairly unified Unix core?

I have to step out for a bit, feel free to look it up

8:46 PM

I will, and thanks for the lesson @Gilles

@terdon - unix lineage: levenez.com/unix

@slm cool, thanks!

@slm woa, my system goe wire when I go to that page :(

The GNU project started from the outside in. They built all the tools around the kernel first and made the source available with it's pervasive license

There's a giant PDF there that shows the history, you can print it out and hang it on your wall, it's huge, levenez.com/unix/unix_a4.pdf

Yeah, if I remember correctly, the first tool was actually emacs

@slm I was just looking at that

Linus looks so out of place there. He could have grown a beard for the occasion.

8:57 PM

user image

@terdon - not sure which came first, given it's stallman i could see emacs being the one

I read somewhere or other that first he needed a decent editor to code in

but they built everything and then once it got to a point they were like, hey maybe we should build our own kernel too, that's hurd, but by then Linus had developed enough of Linux that it was in a better spot

When distros like slackware and redhat started to show up they kind of took the air out of the room for hurd. I think that's what get's stallman so bent about the whole GNU/Linux thing. It's like the guy that built /bin/ls getting all the fame and you built everything else

history is here:

gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html

@slm no joy :(

firefox made chromium crash... :(

@slm yes I've read that one though it's been a while

@terdon - this higher up page, gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html has more details. They do a superb job of documenting the environment that caused GNU to exist.

@Braiam - that doc is an A4 PDF.

download it and read it using evince

seems like a slow day here. Feel like we didn't do much....

feels like we did more weeding then planting

9:06 PM

yeah, not much around.

@terdon - nice answer with the sudo tty_tickets. i wasn't aware of that option at all....not sure if it's wise to use it, but nice to know it's there.

@CraigSanders I use it on my home laptop, wouldn't recommend it for a more public system of course

I only found out about it a couple of days ago when I was doing some tests and was annoyed at the frequency with which I had to enter my password.

@terdon annoyance until you need it ;P

@Braiam yes. But my laptop is never that far from me :)

@terdon exactly! Where you are? :O

9:18 PM

@slm what got RMS all bent was that his work on Free Software was being credited to the Open Source movement, which he sees as entirely missing the point of free software. The ethical aspects of the free software movement - the freedom - were being buried under a pragmatic, utilitarian "the only thing that matters is the code" attitude.

Understandable really.

I see "GNU/Linux" as a nice - and useful - reminder that we wouldn't be where we are today without GNU (and without RMS). GNU started it and made it possible. Linux provided the final piece that made it viable as a mainstream (or nearly-mainstream :) OS. Timing also helped, the early 90s were the very early days of the internet boom which made global distribution and collaboration possible.

Agreed. Though I also very rarely take the time to write GNU/Linux

I use emacs every day though (let alone the coreutils) so I am very grateful to RMS

(i downloaded my first linux - mcc or sls iirc - from uni in '93 or so)

wow, fresh out of the oven huh?

9:28 PM

not quite. it was 0.97 or 0.99 or something. i mostly wanted it for uucp mail & news....i'd been trying to get pduucp running under os/2 and it sucked. so i tried linux and it just worked. i had no interest in graphics or guis so that was good enough for me. being able to connect a serial terminal and get two "computers" out of one was the icing on the cake.

:)

I love it, Linux just works

brb...time to put the coffee on. 7.30am and SWMBCaffeinated wakes up soon.

@CraigSanders - about the time I started with slackware.

I remember having to build X and everything myself from scratch

you really had to want it

Wow, you old timers had it tough :) When I came in all I had to do was run xinit or startx

I do remember the joys of booting straight into command line though. This must have been around 98-99

@slm, yeah i tried mcc and sls briefly then slack. about a year later, switched to debian and joined as a DD. Don't think i bothered at all with X until '98 or so...the graphics cards and monitors i could afford just weren't good enough. i was much happier with crisp, clear text than fuzzy lo-res EGA or VGA graphics. but graphics cards eventually got good and cheap, and so did monitors.

oh, and CGA was even worse. remember that? choice between crappy CGA graphics and, say, a monochrome Hercules card was easy.

9:51 PM

@CraigSanders - you're a SA guy, did i miss anything in this answer?

2

Q: Does the mail command require a mail server?

Does one need to set up a mail server before being able to use the linux mail command?

server mail-command

@terdon - think of how far it came from 91-93 till 98-99, that's really the power of the GNU project and opensource.

Absolutely, and I can see how far it's come from 98-99 to 2013 too

By the was @slm, for some reason on this quiet day, I got past the rep cap. Go figure

@terdon - how so? you mean the 200?

How so? Nothing, I just got 220 rep today

nice

which is weird on such a quiet day

9:54 PM

i've been battling to break 100 today

aww

yeah, some days you do more pruning and upvoting than anything else

live with it, you tend to average at 150 or something

:)

breaking my string of 200's

i've been working towards the 150 200's

i beat stephane to the 50 - 200's

by a couple of days

but he's been much more active this past week.

@terdon - one annoying thing is the amount of dropped upvotes you lose each day

:)

9:57 PM

i had 170pts yesterday

Dropped upvotes?

What from deleted accounts?

once you hit the cap

Ah, yeah, that is annoying

you can only get 200 pts. a day

Good thing generally though since you sometimes get runaway voting

9:57 PM

so i've had mornings where i'm already @ 200, so the only source left for the day is accepts

Yes. I know the feeling though it has not happened that often.

yeah i understand but it makes you less motivated as the day grinds on

unix.stackexchange.com/help/badges/26/epic

The usual suspects huh?

@slm and bounties

yeah

yeah with the bounties the Q's have been less interesting of late to me

i look through them but they're all kind like, blah

unix.stackexchange.com/help/badges/70/ubuntu

I was surprised to get the ubuntu one

only me and gilles had it which really surprised me

10:00 PM

yeah, that is weird

i guess with AU it's more difficult?

I got a couple of those

They make it interesting but are like eh

yeah, linux shell and bash

yeah those are like the backbones of the site

I've tried to follow cuz I'll see gilles adding tags to things to be more attentive to that, but i generally forget about the tags

10:02 PM

I have generalist, that should be good enough :-P

ha

@derobert my thoughts exactly :)

@slm - i'm pretty sure mail(1) uses /usr/sbin/sendmail to actually send mail. that could be a full MTA like exim or postfix (or sendmail). or it could be a minimalist MTA like masqmail or nullmailer. i.e. it needs an MTA.

The only rep thing I really really look forward to is >10k

then there's 15k

@CraigSanders - should I add that? I'm afraid it will confuse ppl, but I think you're right

10:04 PM

@CraigSanders That'd depend on which mail(1) you're using. There are at least two. One can use SMTP, I think.

@slm yeah but at 10 you see deleted content and have access to the advanced stats and stuff from the mod tools. That's fun. Nothing very interesting past that

it just uses sendmail in the same way that the sendmail -bq from cron works

I think all that's left is protect questions (something I've never actually needed to do...) and delete answers

@terdon - yeah 15k was like, what just happened? then 20k

@derobert - that was my next comment :) probably depends on the version of mail. it's possible that some might speak SMTP natively. but it's contrary to The Unix Way.

10:05 PM

the deletes was interesting.

/usr/bin/mail is not "the CLI to the MTA"; that's /usr/{s,}bin/sendmail

/usr/bin/mail is a MUA

@slm yeah I had the same thing on SU. 10k was fun, the rest are meh

or /usr/lib/sendmail for really old *nixes

it just happens to be abused by scripts (including my own!) as the interface to the MTA

you save four whole characters by typing mail rather than sendmail

10:08 PM

> Mailx is an intelligent mail processing system, which has a command syntax reminiscent of ed(1) with lines replaced by messages. It is based on Berkeley Mail 8.1, is intended to provide the functionality of the POSIX mailx command, and offers extensions for MIME, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, and S/MIME.

@derobert so is my answer OK then?

2

Q: Does the mail command require a mail server?

Does one need to set up a mail server before being able to use the linux mail command?

server mail-command

i didn't mention MUA's

@slm I haven't read it yet, I was still marveling over the breathtaking broadness of the "how does Linux work, the entire stack, in explicit detail" question

"By Magic".

That sounds fishy to me

@slm no, that's not really right

10:10 PM

sounded a bit like someone wanting to see if someone would be stupid enough to answer it

> When you run mail and you specify an address to send mail to, sam@example.com. The mail client will query DNS for that host/domain (example.com), and find out what value is designated for its MX record.

... that's not right. That's an MTA

Well, or its the major port of an MTA

Almost no client (MUA) does that.

MX stands for Mail Exchanger

(By "almost no", I mean I can't think of a single one, and I can think of some good technical reasons for one not to exist.)

a MUA may speak SMTP, but it'll almost always be configured to talk to a smarthost or "outgoing SMTP server"

(Most MUAs do speak SMTP, and typically to your ISP's smarthost)

so then when i run mail -s "blah" sam@example.com and there's no MTA who's doing the delivery?

in very simple terms: The MUA is what the user interacts with (e.g. mailx, mutt, thunderbird). The MTA is what transfers mail between users and between systems (e.g. sendmail, postfix, exim). the MDA is what does the final delivery to a local mailbox (e.g. postfix local, procmail, maildrop).

10:13 PM

I know we've setup in production to not have sendmail running and we're able to send mail out, simply by setting up as I said.

mdns4_minimal is also not a DNS cache. It's m ulticast DNS

@slm - if there's no MTA, there's no-one to do the delivery.

@CraigSanders - so then who does the delivery?

some MUAs (GUIs especially) have SMTP clients built in and can talk SMTP to an MTA.

@slm running /usr/sbin/sendmail doesn't require having a sendmail daemon running

10:15 PM

@slm - no-one/nothing. mailx might be smart enough to deliver to a local mbox in /var/mail , and debrobert mentioned that he knows of one version that talks smtp.

there are sendmail implementations that only support sending and not receiving, such as nullmailer

@Gilles - right, I knew that

@CraigSanders I don't think many versions of mailx do local deliveries (they'd likely not have permission)

you can do the same with sendmail -bq

They pass that off to the MDA...

10:17 PM

i've used smarthost typically

The traditional way would be:

mail ---> sendmail [MSA] --> sendmail [MTA]

MSA?

and from there, it'd go either to sendmail as an MDA, procmail as an MDA, or to a remote SMTP server

@slm mail submission

It could also be "sendmail [weird stdin protocol]" instead.

i'm not so up on the terminology, but I usually set it up so that I have sendmail running as a queue, "sendmail: Queue runner@01:00:00 for /var/spool/clientmqueue"

that usually pitches the mail to the smarthost

where fullblown sendmail runs

Sure. I have exim set up similarly.

The queue runner is functioning as a limited MTA

it holds the mail, and uses a single routing decision ("smarthost") to send the mail along

10:21 PM

surprised that people still run actual sendmail instead of something better. like postfix or exim (which is smail done right for anyone who remembers smail)

Has the advantage that if your internet connection goes down for a bit, mail isn't rejected, it'll just be queued for when it comes back. (Or if the smarthost goes down, etc.)

@CraigSanders I think sendmail was still default on RHEL until at least fairly recently.

Don't quote me on that, I'm not very sure.

i don't mind sendmail, it's isn't that hard to setup once you understand it

i have a fully masqueraded domain that I use, you can do some impressive things with sendmail

@CraigSanders openbsd still uses sendmail

yeah, i used to do sendmail. i got better though.

That's my 3rd most viewed blog post. 27k views

lamolabs.org/blog/226/how-to-setup-a-mail-server-on-centos-5

so others are at least referencing it, for setting up sendmail

10:24 PM

Well, my opinion on sendmail is that most of the impressive things you can do with it involve shooting yourself in the foot, repeatedly. With a cannon.

(i don't think there's a common - or once-common - unix mta that i haven't worked with. mail has always been one of my specialities).

alright, i have to drive home from work, thanks for the help guys

@slm you can do some really impressive things with postfix really trivially.

@slm you going to edit that answer into shape?

also, it doesn't fall over under moderate load like sendmail does.

10:25 PM

everytime i've started with it i've felt like, uh already figured this out with sendmail, and it works

@derobert - I fixed what things you guys pointed out

did i miss something

i was editing as we were talking about it

if it works, don't fix it is good

> The mail client will query DNS for that host/domain (example.com), and find out what value is designated for its MX record. MX stands for Mail Exchanger.

that's still there...

isn't that right?

craig said it stands for mail exchanger

Mail clients don't really query MX records. They forward to a smarthost (which would involve an A record, or maybe a SRV record). Or they pass it on to a MTA.

how?

10:27 PM

the biggest problem with the answer is that it says you don't need an MTA. you do. it's just that the MTA doesn't have to be a full mail server like postfix or exim, it could be a send-only MTA like nullmailer.

@CraigSanders Some versions of mail (like the one I have...) can actually talk SMTP to a remote smarthost.

so how does the client summon the MTA?

locally

when i run mail -s "blah" sam@example.com what is mail doing?

@slm Usually by piping to /usr//bin/sendmail

by running /usr/sbin/sendmail

or sbin, or lib, whatever the path is

10:28 PM

OK, i'll say it that way

heirloom-mailx is what I have installed locally, BTW

@derobert - your version of mail is worth noting as an exception - or as an example of a CLI MUA with a SMTP client built-in (same as thunderbird etc)

@CraigSanders I'm not sure how many CLI MUAs are left that don't have an SMTP client built-in. mutt does as well, and I think pine.

ah, i have bsd-mailx installed. heirloom-mailx does SMTP and POP and IMAP. BSD mailx doesn't.

Yeah, bsd-mailx may be the only one.

I think we have some scripts that rely on heirloom-mailx, so I always install that one. Not to mention, whenever I have to use it as a MUA (thankfully, seldom) I notice...

10:33 PM

according to the debian package description, heirloom-mailx needs a smarthost...if this is accurate "It can send messages through a local /usr/bin/sendmail interface or SMTP, using a smarthost."

@derobert @CraigSanders thanks, i've edited it per feedback

heading home, let me know if i missed anything else.

@CraigSanders yeah, it needs a smarthost. It doesn't do MX processing

so, it still needs an MTA....it's just that it can talk to the MTA with /usr/sbin/sendmail or with SMTP.

Yeah, it doesn't need an MTA on your system. It can use a remote one.

So, "Does one need to set up a mail server…?" is "no, you can use your ISP's"

true. almost all users would be better off with a local MTA (nullmailer at least) so that local mail like cronjobs etc doesn't need to leave the system.

10:36 PM

That depends on where they read their mail. If they use gmail or similar, it needs to leave the system, or they'll never see it.

(Though, like I said, I typically run exim to queue the mail, even though there are no local deliveries; 100% is sent on. Handles "the connection was down for a minute" far better.)

what happens if the internet connection is down, or the smart-host is unreachable? does heirloom-mailx queue mail properly? if so, then it's doing some of the functions of an MTA.

I think you just get an error.

But I haven't tested this.

i would say that means you really do need an MTA then. works sometimes == doesn't work.

Its also somewhat irrelevant, because e.g., cron sends with /usr/sbin/sendmail, not /usr/bin/mail. Everything should...

Unix's long tradition of working email conflicts with your average desktop user here, unfortunately.

Various things assume you can just mail the user about any problems.

But the chance of that actually working on a random desktop install is pretty low. (Working as in "actually gets delivered somewhere the user will see")

@derobert unfortunately, ubuntu still doesn't ship with a local mailer by default

10:50 PM

And Debian ships with one that... doesn't work by default.

(This depends on your debconf priority. If the priority is set low enough, then it'll configure fully working mail)

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