Re: sendmail.el bug or expected behavior?

[Jan D.]

> Simon Josefsson writes ("Re: sendmail.el bug or expected behavior?"):
> > I suspect that if the MTA is trying to deliver the message to its
> > final destination, then it may hang regardless of what MTA is used.
>
> IMO the correct way for a MUA to invoke sendmail (on Debian) is
>   /usr/sbin/sendmail -odb -oee ...
> (To be portable to non-FHS systems, use /usr/lib/sendmail)
>
> This is supposed to
>  (a) queue the message, exiting non-0 if unsuccessful
>  (b) fork off a detached delivery attempt, which will
>      deliver the message, leave it queued, or bounce it,
>      as appropriate
>  (c) exit 0, leaving the delivery attempting going
>
> The problem that RMS mentions happens if you don't give any -odX
> options: usually that means you'll get `foreground' delivery, which
> typically means that the MTA will try one delivery attempt now.

This may not do the right thing.  It is not uncommon to not run any 
sendmail
daemon, but just forward everything to another host.  If we do it like
this, the mail will never be delivered, but sit in the queue forever.

        Jan D.