From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 501A5138334 for ; Sat, 21 Jul 2018 21:16:23 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5399CE07FA; Sat, 21 Jul 2018 21:16:14 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.muc.de (colin.muc.de [193.149.48.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 69D16E07DB for ; Sat, 21 Jul 2018 21:16:12 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 35634 invoked by uid 3782); 21 Jul 2018 21:16:12 -0000 Received: from acm.muc.de (p5B146747.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [91.20.103.71]) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Sat, 21 Jul 2018 23:16:11 +0200 Received: (qmail 24663 invoked by uid 1000); 21 Jul 2018 21:03:02 -0000 Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2018 21:03:02 +0000 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: [gentoo-user] Heads up: Gentoo fouls up mail transport agent. Message-ID: <20180721210302.GB24559@ACM> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13) X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.12 (Macallan) From: Alan Mackenzie X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-Archives-Salt: 1e3ca0f0-f3fe-4bbd-ba75-498fbc998ef5 X-Archives-Hash: f23423aeb22827699d89254fb0669b48 Hello, Gentoo. Right at the moment, I feel a lot of sympathy with Alan Grimes, and need a lot of restraint in avoiding the use of swear words in describing some Gentoo developer. What has happened is that somebody decided to add virtual/mta-1 surreptitiously to the default software set in Gentoo. This installs something called nullmailer, which I don't need, didn't ask for, and fouls up my mail transmission. nullmailer installs a file /usr/sbin/sendmail. This masks out the correct /usr/bin/sendmail (which is a symbolic link to s/qmail, which I installed by hand, not using emerge) because /usr/sbin is before /usr/bin in $PATH. It appears that nullmailer was installed on 2018-06-15. Up until recently, things seemed to work; mutt seems to bind itself to the sendmail it finds at (mutt's) installation time. However, mutt-1.10.1 was released in the last couple of days. It bound itself to the imposter sendmail. So, when I sent mail from mutt, nullmailer simply swallowed it up, without forwarding it to its destination (nullmailer not being configured). There were no signs of this lack of action anywhere to be seen. SO, WATCH OUT, FELLOW GENTOOERS! The temporary solution was to rename /usr/sbin/sendmail, and to reinstall mutt. That's how I'm able to send this mail. This has cost me ~two hours of time, so far. But what's the proper method to tell my gentoo system that I don't want crud like nullmailer installed? How can I guard myself against such presumptiousness on the part of the Gentoo devs in the future? Is this worth a bug report? -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).