It's all about the shrieking.

[solarbird]

Things are well and firmly pooched.

The new sendmail changes the format of sendmail.cf again. The new sendmail configuration tools are installed in a VERY, VERY BROKEN STATE and don't work. The package manager has decided that it has a holy obligation to remove all of:
apache at bind bug deliver info2www junkbuster logrotate man2html mgetty-fax mutt nmh nn phpmyadmin qpopper samba smartlist super swat task-dns-server task-samba trn www-pgsql xlbiff
...but I've managed to fix that. I've forced a (semi?) correct sendmail.cf together in the new data format, but now that it's running, sendmail can't see name service. Meanwhile, the package manager has also decided that libcurses-dev conflicts with itself, and by god is going to let me know about it constantly.

All of this started just in upgrading around a libc but that allows remote exploits. The dependancy tree for libc is {darth vader noise}impressive{/darth vader noise}. And, apparently, severely fucked.

stupid package managers. i hate this really a lot.

Comments

[elthar.livejournal.com]

Postfix?

[msadie.livejournal.com]

Wow, although I live with a computer engineer, I'd swear you were speaking a language other than English. Wow.

[pobig.livejournal.com]

This is why I try to install everything on my system from source, and why I use qmail.

Of course, this is also why I still don't have X running three months after getting a new computer with a video card that's only supported by a later version of XFree86 since #9 went out of business, and of course that later version of XFree86 only supports libc6, and until recently the core system utilities were linked against libc4. I persist in maintaining the only running instance of the Sfonk distribution, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

[solarbird]

Playing "Fuck the package manager! Fuck it right in the ear!" is looking pretty tempting right now. But a chunk of this is outright sendmail's fault - they're actively trying to make it essentially impossible to maintain sendmail.cf directly. I'm Told (tm) that they want sendmail administration to be more like what Windows server admins are used to. And I'll agree that this experience is a lot like those I've had running Windows boxen, which is to say stupid, hateful, and mean.

I'd be tempted to go to FreeBSD or something, but that wouldn't solve the sendmail problems. (FreeBSD+exim might, but there are reasons we didn't switch to exim when we moved from slackware to Debian...)

Anyway, it's all working now. I think.