[pkg-fetchmail-maint] Bug#593814: Bug#593814: fetchmail starts too early in init scripts

[Nico Golde]

severity 593814 important
thanks

Hi,
* rpnpif <rpnpif at free.fr> [2010-08-21 12:57]:
> /etc/init.d/fetchmail has 
> # Should-Start:      $mail-transport-agent exim4
> but fetchmail starts very early and failed to deliver mails because 
> The mail transport agent is not ready.

From the documentation:
"Should-Start: boot_facility_1 [boot_facility_2...] defines the facilities that
if present should start before the service provided by the script.
Nevertheless, the script can still start if the listed facilities are missing."

Are you sure you have a service installed that provide the mail-transport-agent
facility? If you do from my understanding this shouldn't happen.

Which MTA are you using, is it maybe not registering itself as
mail-transport-agent?

Please also see: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=582475

> This issue could loss mails.
> I suggest that /etc/init.d/fetchmail has :
> 
> 1.
> # Required-Start:    $network $local_fs $remote_fs $syslog $mail-transport-agent
> # Required-Stop:     $remote_fs $mail-transport-agent

From my understanding this should make no difference, if there is a mail-transport-agent
facility it is started before fetchmail given the Should-Start. I can also think of
setups without a mail transfer agent so making it a requirement is not appropriate in
my opinion.

> 2.
> Fetchmail does not need usually to start immediately after the boot. A delay
> of few minutes (one ?) before the fetchmail start could improve security of 
> delivering (for ie : to enable a good antispam starting).

I don't quite understand this, where would you expect this delay to be implemented?

So far I don't see the bug therefore downgrading the severity.

Kind regards
Nico
-- 
Nico Golde - http://www.ngolde.de - nion at jabber.ccc.de - GPG: 0xA0A0AAAA
For security reasons, all text in this mail is double-rot13 encrypted.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-fetchmail-maint/attachments/20100822/bb642628/attachment.pgp>