What Happened To Sendmail?
 

With the start of the new year I thought I would update my long in the tooth Slackware mail server. Since a fresh install on an idle server has the benefit of updating all the software, not just the mail software, I normally take that route. It also saves me taking the existing server off line as it normally it takes me a few hours of reinventing the wheel to add DKIM, clamav, certificates etc.

After doing a full install of current, I copied over a lot of the configuration files from the existing server as a starting point and then manually ran /etc/rc.d/rc.sendmail to find out where I was. I knew that it was a certainty that there would be some errors that I would have to deal with, but I was definitely not expecting the error “No such file or directory”. What was really a surprise is that after some investigation I found that not only was rc.sendmail missing, but “/usr/bin/sendmail” and the directory "/usr/share/sendmail" were also missing.

Thinking it was something I had possibly done wrong, I started over with a new install and selected all software and “terse” so I could easily watch the packages installed. I was expecting to see a sendmail installed in the “n” section but it wasn’t there. In addition the option for “rc.sendmail” was missing from the startup options.

Where did sendmail go?

/extra

Why was it taken out of the general install? Is there a way of including it as it is with the general install?

Essentially (can't find so quickly when) it has been replaced with postfix, see www.postfix.org as sendmail hasn't been updated since 2015 so doesn't get any upstream support (and maybe even is EOL).
is the description from the slackdesc file.

Being old does not seem to be a good enough reason for dropping it arbitrarily from the install process, particularly when it probably took more effort to remove it and than to let it remain as is.

When I was watching all the packages being installed in terse mode during the second install to see if sendmail was really passed over, I saw packages pass by that included “floppy” in the title. I have a feeling that there are more people using sendmail than are still using floppy drives yet those packages are still being installed.

I have been using Slackware since the mid 90s and I must say this is the first time I have been disappointed in a decision made by Pat V. :(

The changelog entry you want to look for is "Fri Nov 17 00:56:25 UTC 2017".

If you don't want to be disappointed again, then you might want to keep your eye on the "What do you want to see in -current"? thread, and speak up when decisions like this get proposed.

Yes it was proposed there first (by me) before it was done. You're the first person to disagree with the decision.

But it hasn't been removed, just moved to /extra
With no newer versions coming in Pat didn't even have to recompile it.

Although later he did recompile it:
And it hasn't been confined to /pasture yet, /extra is the right place for it so that people who do want it can still install it.

I really do not understand why you would even think about asking something be removed that you obviously do not use rather than live and let live so others could continue to easily use it. If it was because you thought it was old and possibly not being maintained as suggested in your reply here, then a warning in the README about that possibility might have been a better approach.

As for not participating in the "current" discussion, it never crossed my mind to do so. Slackware has always been stable for me and I never felt the need, but you do make a good point going forward. In this case however, if I was the only dissenter as a result of a lack of participation as you suggest, I am not sure it would have made much difference. (sigh)

Thanks for at least letting me know what happened. I appreciate it.

Edit:
@ehartman I did not see your post before posting the above. Thanks for your comments and I am glad to hear that Pat is keeping it current in extra.

cough

And I didn't ask for it to be removed. I asked for it to be replaced with something universally considered to be better. I understand that you do not agree, but, well...

BTW: Slackware was one of the last to switch to postfix (which is easier to configure for newbies anyway), most other distro's did so a long time ago, even RHEL (RedHat), which is known for its conservative approach; the newest releases are _still_ using the 3.10 kernel, though with backported security patches: kernel-3.10.0-957.el7.x86_64.rpm,
did so at least a release ago (RHEL 5.11, released in 2014 already had it as alternative to sendmail)

A similar decision is now due for Slackware 14.2 STABLE: what to do with PHP?
See this discussion http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-a-4175641599/
In short, but see the thread for more info, PHP 5.6 is now EOL, no more security (or bugfix) patches will be published for it anymore, but the logical upgrade to PHP 7 will break a LOT of installations as there are many incompatibilities between those versions.

We already had all of those problems in Slackware-current!

@dugan and @ehartman.

My hat is off to both of you for the work you do and the contributions you obviously make to keep Slackware viable. And also for keeping the conversation civil in spite of my comments. I have feeling it wasn't easy as I am not big fan of change and it shows.

My first attempt to install sendmail from the standard tar ball started to be a trial, but once I realized that it was also in extra as a package, I had sendmail installed and running without the add ons in less than 5 minutes. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.