"Eric S. Raymond" <esr(_at_)thyrsus(_dot_)com> writes:
Matthias Andree <ma(_at_)dt(_dot_)e-technik(_dot_)uni-dortmund(_dot_)de>:
OK, then let's state that the MDA option is still broken (it cannot
trigger bounces for example and it doesn't treat multidrop -- this has
been known for month, Sunil and I exchanged some posts here; but is
still unfixed and undocumented).
Yes, we should address this. Do you have any more exact diagnosis of
the problems? Are these two separate problems or one?
They are separate AFAIR:
1. when fetchmail injects into an MDA, it will not send bounces (bounces
are tied to SMTP forwarding)
2. fetchmail assumes the MDA can handle multiple local addresses.
The problem arises that in the past, there has not been a clear
distinction between using the MDA option to inject into real MDAs
(procmail, maildrop) -- these handle exactly ONE recipient, no more,
no less -- and abusing the MDA option to inject into a
/usr/sbin/sendmail compatible command that handles multiple
recipients.
With the advent of alternatives to sendmail, the -oem option no longer
works to send mail.
Past discussion and my current suggestions:
The MDA option should be split. There should be one MDA option (to name
a command with arguments for local delivery to a single recipient ONLY,
not for bounces), and one MTA option (as alternative to SMTP and LMTP,
to name a command with arguments for local or remote delivery; local
delivery would happen if the MDA option was unset).
Background: for bounces, only SMTP and MTA "transports" are
adequate. These handle more than one recipient (though usually not
beyond 100, but this should be configurable). The -oem option for
sendmail should be deprecated.
For delivery, SMTP, MTA are adequate as well as LMTP and MDA. I cannot
comment on the multi-address capability of LMTP, but the MDA is NOT
capable to deliver to several addresses at the same time, so the MDA (in
contrast to the MTA) must be spawned once for each recipient; likely,
feeding it a temporary file is more efficient for some of them. Some
MDAs need the local user name ($LOGNAME) (say, maildrop -d user).
--
Matthias Andree