Debian
msmtp package

msmtp package should use update-alternatives for symlinking

Bug #1893268 reported by Heikki Orsila
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
msmtp (Debian)
New
Unknown
msmtp (Ubuntu)
Won't Fix
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

msmtp creates a symlink from /usr/sbin/sendmail to "../bin/msmtp". It does not use update-alternatives which makes it difficult to install msmtp and another program (a custom sendmail) on the same system. Could you support /etc/alternatives for the sendmail linking, please?

Best regards,

Heikki Orsila

Revision history for this message
Heikki Orsila (heikki-orsila) wrote :

Correction. This bug report should apply to msmtp-mta package which creates the symlink from sendmail to msmtp.

Revision history for this message
Simon Déziel (sdeziel) wrote :

@Heikki, I would suggest you report this to Debian as msmtp(-mta) is simply sync'ed from Debian to Ubuntu. Once you've done it, please add the link to the bug in here. Thanks!

Revision history for this message
Otto Kekäläinen (otto) wrote :

Indeed, bugs be better filed in Debian so that the package maintainer Emmanuel Bouthenot would see this (https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/msmtp).

As for the idea:

There are a lot of programs that provide the /usr/sbin/sendmail binary (or symlink), see https://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=contents&keywords=%2Fusr%2Fsbin%2Fsendmail&mode=path&suite=stable&arch=any

All of these packages would need to agree to use update-alternatives for this. Currently I suspect no package is using it (checked Postfix and Exim pacakges, neither used update-alternatives). A single package maintainer cannot decide on this alone.

Based on https://salsa.debian.org/exim-team/exim4/-/blob/master/debian/changelog#L6390-6394 there was something like this planned in 2002 but does not exists today.

While update-alternatives could have its merits, currently these packages seem to work by all providing the same metapackage and conflicting each other via it: https://packages.debian.org/stretch/mail-transport-agent

Changed in msmtp (Ubuntu):
status: New → Won't Fix
Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in msmtp (Debian):
status: Unknown → New
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.
Subscribing...

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.