[Savannah-hackers] Re: Using ssmtp in the chroot

[James E. Blair]

Sylvain Beucler <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello,
>
> The change in the frontend to use SMTP instead of PHP mail() is not
> welcome in Savane, and has some issues (like missing Date: field).
>
> It would be better to still use the PHP mail() function.
>
> I did not found documentation on why the SMTP code was used in the
> first place; I assume it was meant to avoid installing exim in the
> apache root.

Indeed.  The main requirement is to "keep the chroot simple".

There's not much point in making a chroot with as much software
as the actual system.  Savannah's chroot has very little software (not
much more than savannah and CVS).  We can keep a close watch on such a
system.  

Normal MTAs do things like host lookups, and we intentionally didn't
want to bring the system libraries into the chroot, so that's why we
moved to SMTP.

Using the SMTP module we can just send all mail to 127.0.0.1 and then
exim handles it from there.  In short -- it's the easiest and safest
way out of the chroot.  No additional software needed.

> I suggest we instead install ssmtp (or a similar tool) in the apache
> root, that will forward mail to localhost. It will ease the merge with
> Savane and work like exim.
>
> Is anybody against this?

I'm not in against it in principle.  Certainly "/usr/lib/sendmail" has
a history of being a widely compatible interface.  I think that a
simple program that emulated that and sent mail on to 127.0.0.1 would
be okay.  But I think we might run into problems:

When we tried to use an MTA to get mail out of chrooted savannah, it
wanted to do a host lookup.  Even when statically compiled, programs
that use gethostbyname invoke nss which insists on using dlopen for
its libraries.  So suddenly this simple MTA needs a bunch of
supporting system libraries to function.  I think ssmtp might have the
same problem.

I like the simplicity of the SMTP method and would prefer to keep it.
Can we fix the SMTP code and bring it up to standard?

-Jim