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.

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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On Sat Jan 31, 2009 at 21:58:01 +0000, Nuno Magalh??es wrote:

> 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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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.)



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."


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Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 01/31/2009 03:58 PM, Nuno Magalhães wrote:
>> Can i have a regular desktop Debian without an MTA?
>
> Linux? No.
>
Please, don't overestimate Base system is also Linux, though it doesn't contain any MTA
for the obvious reasons.

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C++/Perl developer, Debian Maintainer

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 16:12:24 -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> 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)

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Florian |


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* Nuno Magalhães <nunomagalhaes@eu.ipp.pt> [2009 Jan 31 16:00 -0600]:

> 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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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?

Thanks again.
Nuno Magalhães


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On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:04 AM, Nuno Magalhães <nunomagalhaes@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?

Nye


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On 01/31/2009 07:28 PM, Aneurin Price wrote:

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:04 AM, Nuno Magalhães <nunomagalhaes@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."


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Nye writes:
> 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


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