[Gllug] Not installing stuff.

[John Edwards]

On Wed, Jun 01, 2011 at 08:05:39PM +0100, general_email at technicalbloke.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to install apticron via apt-get on an Ubuntu 10.10 server but
> it resolutely refuses to do so without installing a bunch of other email
> related items, namely: postfix, bsd-mailx & ssl-cert. It seems these are
> not "suggestions" as adding the --no-install-recommends flag doesn't
> make a shred of difference.
> 
> The reason I do not want the above is that I have my own custom mail
> server running on port 25, this is a very simple program with almost no
> privileges that can only email one email address (mine). I really don't
> want a full mail server on the box - less is more after all!
> 
> I can't see why apticron has to have the above packages if there is
> already a perfectly serviceable mail server running on the system
> already. Am I being naive or ignorant of how scripts like to send mail
> here or is there a way to get apticron to install without the extra bumph?

I think the problem is that apticron uses the 'mailx' program to
send email and does not include a full SMTP library that can send
email to an SMTP server on port 25 (it's only a bash script).

The various 'mailx' programs usually use a sendmail-compatible
'sendmail' program to inject the email into mail system. This
doesn't have to be be sendmail, but could be postfix, exim, etc.

There are some mailx packages such heirloom-mailx that can be
configured to use an external SMTP server instead. This should
not have a "Depends" dependency on an MTA package, though they
will probably "Suggest" it.


-- 
#---------------------------------------------------------#
|    John Edwards   Email: john at cornerstonelinux.co.uk    |
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