Add the "lsb-invalid-mta" package, with a fake sendmail.

This allows the installation of LSB packages to not pull in an MTA any more,
which once adds awkward configuration questions to the installation process
and second adds an often unnneeded daemon to the system.

LP: #141641
Signed-off-by: Didier Raboud <odyx@debian.org>

diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
index d5e503fc0d8a64a0066366ac32eb17c155e91f21..9da6ea3b517eac8e16baef69c11b4655cd92ba0a 100644 (file)
--- a/debian/control
+++ b/debian/control
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ Depends: lsb-release,
  libz1,
  libncurses5,
  libpam0g,
- exim4 | mail-transport-agent,
+ lsb-invalid-mta | mail-transport-agent,
  at,
  bc,
  binutils,
@@ -326,3 +326,30 @@ Description: Linux Standard Base version reporting utility
  While it is intended for use by LSB packages, this command may also
  be useful for programmatically distinguishing between a pure Debian
  installation and derived distributions.
+
+Package: lsb-invalid-mta
+Architecture: all
+Suggests: lsb
+Provides: mail-transport-agent
+Conflicts: mail-transport-agent
+Description: Linux Standard Base sendmail dummy
+ The Linux Standard Base (http://www.linuxbase.org/) is a standard
+ core system that third-party applications written for Linux can
+ depend upon.
+ .
+ This package contains nothing else than a fake /usr/sbin/sendmail
+ command to fulfill the LSB's requirement of providing this command without
+ requiring an MTA to get installed, which once introduces a daemon which
+ can cause security problems and second, users get asked questions about
+ how they want their MTA configured when in reality they simply wanted to
+ install a deskltop application or a printer driver, but the dependency on
+ LSB compliance pulls in an MTA with the installation.
+ .
+ The LSB requirement on /usr/sbin/sendmail comes from old times where Linux
+ and Unix machines had all fixed IPs and did server tasks in data centers.
+ Today's typical desktop Linux machines do not do local e-mail any more as
+ users use external e-mail services.
+ .
+ The /usr/sbin/sendmail always exits with exit status -1 (255) and sends a
+ warning message to stderr, so that if a program actually tries to send e-mail
+ via the sendmail command the user gets note.

diff --git a/debian/lsb-invalid-mta.install b/debian/lsb-invalid-mta.install
new file mode 100644 (file)
index 0000000..68ee82e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/debian/lsb-invalid-mta.install
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sendmail /usr/sbin/

diff --git a/sendmail b/sendmail
new file mode 100644 (file)
index 0000000..259b86b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/sendmail
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+echo "Please install an MTA on this system if you want to use sendmail!" >&2
+exit 255