Pardon my warped sense of humour, but trying to install sendmail in openSUSE is rather like a game of whack-a-mole. Postfix is installed by default. If I ask for its removal it insists on installing exim. Once exim is installed, Yast wont let me remove it without installing msmtp. Fine, so then we 'whack' msmtp after its installation and Yast satisfies its needs by installing sendmail to keep php5 happy with assurance of at lease 1 MTA on deck.

Problem, of course, is that I want to ride around this dizzy route but once. I don't want overlap of sendmail and postfix packages, I don't want postfix setting up a link in /usr/sbin/sendmail when /usr/sbin/sendmail is supposed to be sendmail's 'home' on my server. And I ALWAYS want an up-to date sendmail; (18.15.2 at the moment, not 18.14.9). So sendmail truly is deprecated in Tumbleweed. The only way I can accomplish what I need is from source, which is something I've done for many years now.

So ... can anyone who has ridden upon this SUSE loop tell me how I can get rid of all identified MTAs so I have a clean slate? I even attempted to remove mail from Yast's list of capabilities, but that isn't allowed either because it would break the system. Curious that those who are for removing MTA's are now preventing me from doing just that.

Why don't I simply go with SUSE's 14.9 release? Because it is clear to me that support for it is tenuous at best. I'm quite content to take that familiar problem on, but I need at least a clean slate to begin with. And if I am to maintain sendmail rather than SUSE I want the standard sendmail locations and permissions.

On the other hand,
I have been using Tumbleweed since last spring when I left Fedora at its release 23. Didn't quite appreciate their separation of server from desktop. I actually admire Tumbleweed's installation and package management tools. Everything an administrator needs is in front of him nn clean, concise displays with a crisp response which one can get used to very quickly. I have encountered neither glitches nor breaks in more than 8 months, and it seems I am on the way to being relieved of the time-intensive updating every 6 months or so which has been known to drag out over 2 months from time to time.

Were it not for encountering the sendmail mess, which has nothing to do with sendmail itself, I'd be one of your strongest advocates. All my user accounts, all my graphics support, all my data base and development services are working beautifully and zypper is truly 'fun' to use. Exceptionally well done.

Please .... a little help with clearing up the postfix leftovers so I can help myself?