Common problems with Ubuntu

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 09:51:09AM +0300, geoffrey mendelson wrote:
>
> On May 13, 2010, at 9:16 AM, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote:
>>
>> "Installed at the same time" and "operational at the same time" are
>> not the same thing. This is one of the things that "alternatives"
>> helps to achieve - you switch between MTAs with a single command
>> (assuming they are all properly configured, etc.). I suppose you also
>> need to stop and start the corresponding services.
>
>
> Not with MTA's. They have various files with the same names, files in  
> the same locations, etc. that are incompatible. While everyone likes to 
> put them in /etc/mail (with some linked by the same file name in /etc), 

Sendmail does, originally. Not Exim, and nither postfix. As per the FHS
and Debian's policy, the configuration files of package foo should be
under /etc/foo .

> you would need to have an /etc/mail/sendmail, /etc/mail/qmail, / 
> etc/mail/postfix, and so on tree, a /var/mail (or /var/spool/mail)  

/var[/spool]/mail is not managed by the MTA. The MTA may put files there
directly, or deliver it using a tool such as procmail. It may also need
to deliver files to various other places (e.g.: to the separatly managed
IMAP mailboxes of cyrus-imap).

-- 
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