From: WIlliam Cheswick <ches@cheswick.com>
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] man-page style
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2018 09:55:11 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <68E43E9C-BD27-4DDB-93D1-AD82EBCA976A@cheswick.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20181129184845.GB18414@mcvoy.com>
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1991 bytes --]
I sat down to my first TCP/IP connected host around 1985, and the first thing I wanted to do was to configure my first non-UUCP email machine.
After an hour of wading through sendmail’s state machines, I gave up wondering why it had to be so hard.
In the amazing 184 BSTJ, Dave Presotto had described upas, the replacement he built for sendmail. I loved its ease of use, and it was one of the reasons I wanted to join 1127, which I did in late 1987.
I supported email and upas for a number of years, including the {bitnet | csnet | uucp | acsnet(?)} -> domain migration. Like the proverbial (and non-existent) boiling frog, this crept up on me: it was a mild surprise to realize we were using the other stuff much any more.
Aside from configuration issues, the main complaint with sendmail was that it was a huge program running as root, with intentional and unintentional holes in. For many years it was a steady source of security problems, including its use in the Morris worm.
That said, sendmail is still running, and handling a fair amount of mail, I believe. A few years ago I checked for recent security problems and found none reported. I think this is a case of “software annealing”: if you don’t change the specs much, and keep working on it, you will eventually get most of the bugs.
As for the configuration: when Norman Wilson moved to Toronto, he implemented some form of little language for configuring sendmail, treating it somewhat as an assembly language. I don’t know the details, but they might be of interest.
> On Nov 29, 2018, at 1:48 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
> Indeed. Sendmail got a lot of hate but mostly from people in pure
> user@host.domain <mailto:user@host.domain> worlds. I lived in the UUCP / BitNet / Arpanet
> world and while sendmail was definitely not the easiest thing to
> configure, once you got it right it just kept working (unlike UUCP
> that seemed to need constant babysitting).
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6392 bytes --]
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-11-30 14:56 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 141+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-11-16 0:03 Doug McIlroy
2018-11-16 4:50 ` Larry McVoy
2018-11-16 5:32 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-11-16 6:03 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-11-16 15:33 ` Jim Capp
2018-11-16 15:37 ` WIlliam Cheswick
2018-11-16 15:48 ` Clem Cole
2018-11-16 18:47 ` Tom Manos
2018-11-17 3:29 ` Andy Kosela
2018-11-16 16:55 ` Paul Winalski
2018-11-16 17:13 ` Larry McVoy
2018-11-16 17:31 ` Paul Winalski
2018-11-16 20:45 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-11-16 17:33 ` Jim Capp
2018-11-16 17:36 ` Larry McVoy
2018-11-16 20:50 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-11-16 17:39 ` Jon Steinhart
2018-11-16 18:57 ` Clem Cole
2018-11-16 17:29 ` Toby Thain
2018-11-16 20:52 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-11-16 20:55 ` Larry McVoy
2018-11-16 20:56 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-16 21:05 ` Jim Capp
2018-11-16 21:09 ` Kurt H Maier
2018-11-19 2:53 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-19 5:59 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2018-11-19 14:00 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-16 21:13 ` Jon Steinhart
2018-11-16 22:24 ` Clem Cole
2018-11-17 7:50 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2018-11-19 2:58 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-19 3:11 ` Jon Steinhart
2018-11-19 3:21 ` George Michaelson
2018-11-19 3:32 ` Larry McVoy
2018-11-19 6:13 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2018-11-19 14:06 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-19 15:35 ` Clem Cole
2018-11-19 15:41 ` David
2018-11-19 17:06 ` Jon Steinhart
2018-11-19 17:39 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2018-11-19 18:40 ` Clem Cole
2018-11-19 22:08 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2018-11-20 6:52 ` arnold
2018-11-20 7:10 ` Otto Moerbeek
2018-11-28 0:09 ` Eric Allman
2018-11-28 0:36 ` G. Branden Robinson
2018-11-28 0:57 ` Eric Allman
2018-11-28 1:26 ` G. Branden Robinson
2018-11-29 7:25 ` arnold
2018-11-29 18:20 ` Eric Allman
2018-11-29 18:52 ` Larry McVoy
2018-12-03 6:52 ` arnold
2018-11-19 13:08 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2018-11-19 13:20 ` Donald ODona
2018-11-19 7:05 ` Warner Losh
2018-11-19 7:20 ` Bakul Shah
2018-11-19 16:48 ` Jon Steinhart
2018-11-28 0:10 ` Eric Allman
2018-11-29 18:48 ` Larry McVoy
2018-11-29 19:13 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-11-29 19:28 ` Larry McVoy
2018-11-29 19:32 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-29 19:36 ` Warner Losh
2018-11-29 19:40 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-30 14:55 ` WIlliam Cheswick [this message]
2018-11-30 15:05 ` [TUHS] Upas rewrite little language William Cheswick
2018-11-30 22:58 ` [TUHS] man-page style Dave Horsfall
2018-12-01 23:24 ` WIlliam Cheswick
2018-12-01 19:53 ` arnold
2018-12-01 21:26 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-12-02 7:22 ` [TUHS] Ease (was Re: man-page style) arnold
2018-12-02 7:32 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-12-02 17:22 ` arnold
2018-11-17 14:49 ` [TUHS] man-page style Michael Parson
2018-11-17 21:07 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-11-16 20:59 ` Jim Capp
2018-11-16 21:24 ` Toby Thain
2018-11-16 21:29 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-11-16 21:35 ` Toby Thain
2018-11-19 2:59 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-16 21:28 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2018-11-16 21:37 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-11-17 23:38 ` Ralph Corderoy
2018-11-18 0:31 ` Donald ODona
2018-11-18 3:00 ` Toby Thain
2018-11-19 3:09 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-18 5:01 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2018-11-18 5:29 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2018-11-18 0:40 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2018-11-16 21:12 ` emanuel stiebler
2018-11-16 18:00 ` Warner Losh
2018-11-16 18:16 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-11-16 19:35 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-16 20:50 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-11-16 22:25 ` Bakul Shah
2018-11-17 0:25 ` Earl Baugh
2018-11-16 21:26 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-11-17 18:16 ` arnold
2018-11-17 18:14 ` arnold
2018-11-17 18:21 ` Kurt H Maier
2018-11-17 19:42 ` arnold
2018-11-17 20:02 ` Noel Hunt
2018-11-17 20:36 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2018-11-19 3:05 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-16 5:24 ` Anthony Martin
2018-11-16 1:43 Doug McIlroy
2018-11-16 3:18 ` Rob Pike
2018-11-16 3:38 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS
2018-11-16 3:50 ` Bakul Shah
2018-11-16 13:29 ` Mike Markowski
2018-11-16 13:44 ` Bakul Shah
2018-11-16 14:02 ` Harald Arnesen
2018-11-16 6:38 ` Larry McVoy
2018-11-16 13:42 ` Clem Cole
2018-11-16 19:05 ` Nemo
2018-11-16 19:29 Noel Chiappa
2018-11-16 20:46 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-11-17 15:39 Noel Chiappa
2018-11-19 3:02 ` Chet Ramey
2018-11-19 4:15 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-11-19 22:18 ` Michael Parson
2018-11-20 0:55 ` George Michaelson
2018-11-19 4:43 ` Kurt H Maier
2018-12-01 20:52 Norman Wilson
2018-12-01 21:34 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-12-01 23:09 Norman Wilson
2018-12-02 2:37 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-12-02 2:44 ` Larry McVoy
2018-12-02 2:59 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2018-12-02 22:30 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-12-03 1:05 ` Warner Losh
2018-12-04 7:48 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-12-03 1:14 ` Bakul Shah
2018-12-03 1:30 ` Larry McVoy
2018-12-04 21:26 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-12-04 21:34 ` Larry McVoy
2018-12-04 22:11 ` Bakul Shah
2018-12-05 6:50 ` Pierre DAVID
2018-12-28 6:32 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-12-03 6:53 ` arnold
2018-12-02 3:24 Norman Wilson
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=68E43E9C-BD27-4DDB-93D1-AD82EBCA976A@cheswick.com \
--to=ches@cheswick.com \
--cc=tuhs@tuhs.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).