lsb

sendmail wording change

Bug #1331625 reported by Jeff Johnson
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
lsb
In Progress
Medium
Unassigned
Mandriva
Fix Released
Medium

Bug Description

FHS version 2.3, /usr/lib section:

Specific Options

For historical reasons, /usr/lib/sendmail must be a
symbolic link to /usr/sbin/sendmail if the latter exists. [24]

However, I'm observing that current Linux distros do not implement in this way.
 For example, it's quite common for /usr/sbin/semdail and /usr/lib/sendmail
both to be symlinks off somewhere else, for example an /etc/alternatives
directory entry which ultimately resolves to the real MTA. However, they *are*
providing a /usr/lib/sendmail symlink which *does* resolve to the actual MTA.
The replacement wording should permit /usr/lib/sendmail to be a symbolic link
which resolves to the system's MTA of choice without requiring that it point
specifically to /usr/sbin/sendmail.

The following examples show three different implementions where both names
exist, and end up resolving to the same executable, but none follow the current
FHS guideline to the letter.

Observed example 1:
/usr/lib/sendmail -> /etc/alternatives/mta-in_libdir
/usr/sbin/sendmail -> /etc/alternatives/mta
/etc/alternatives/mta-in_libdir -> /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix
/etc/alternatives/mta -> /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix

Observed example 2:
/usr/lib/sendmail -> /etc/alternatives/mta-sendmail
/usr/sbin/sendmail -> /etc/alternatives/mta
/etc/alternatives/mta-sendmail -> /usr/lib/sendmail.sendmail
/etc/alternatives/mta -> /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail
/usr/lib/sendmail.sendmail -> /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail

Observed example 3:
/usr/lib/sendmail -> /usr/sbin/exim
/usr/sbin/sendmail -> exim

Tags: fhs
Changed in mandriva:
importance: Unknown → Medium
status: Unknown → In Progress
Changed in mandriva:
status: In Progress → Fix Released
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