[Popcon-developers] Should we patch popcon to send emails even without an MTA?

[Bill Allombert]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2004 at 09:25:22PM +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> 
> The patch for bug #239097 seem sane to me.  Should we apply it and
> upload a new version?  Any comments on the patch?

Well, I find the report of bug #239097 very confusing.
I suppose we should experiment with the idea before applying the patch.

How do we decide to use /usr/lib/sendmail instead of built-in smtp ?
Maybe /usr/lib/sendmail can only send email locally.

Will we need more debconf templates ?

A built-in SMTP engine has the following problems:

1) You need to configure the smarthost and the sender address properly.
(it might be possible to use popcon.debian.org and
submitter@popcon.debian.org but that will not work with some ISP that
block port 25.)

2) If the network is not up when the cron job run, the mail is not send.

> The number of submissions are dropping.  The reason is probably that
> popcon is no longer installed as part of the default installation in
> sarge.  We might want to do something to make it easier to
> participate.

Are you positive popcon is no longer installed as part of the default
installation ? Is it a bug or a feature ? Should we ask debian-boot ?

I think there have been a lot of test install in the past. Given that
popcon reports can live 20 days after the install is trashed, there might
be a lot of reports of little values. 

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.