[Mageia-dev] [RFC] msec (nail) can't send reports to local users accounts - require an MTA?

Tue Oct 11 11:21:50 CEST 2011

Florian Hubold a écrit :
+> Am 28.09.2011 14:40, schrieb Florian Hubold:
+>> Am 22.09.2011 21:37, schrieb Florian Hubold:
+>>> Am 22.09.2011 00:09, schrieb Luc Menut:
+>>> My own opinion is we should do both 1 and 3 in your list of options
+>>> 1/ Change the defaults in /etc/security/msec/level.*  and
+>>> 3/ make dma a suggest for msec
+>>>
+>>> If these two changes were introduced as updates to Mageia 1 then the
+>>> consequences would I believe be.
+>>> a/ Users with default configuration :-
+>>>
+>>> Changing the defaults in /etc/security/msec/level.* will not affect an
+>>> existing installation unless they change their security level.
+>>>
+>>> Mail would go into /var/spool/mail/root instead of 
+>>> /root/dead.letter  They
+>>> probably would still not see the mail because they are unlikely to know
+>>> how to configure another user to receive roots mail. The only change 
+>>> they
+>>> would notice is when logging in at a root console they would see a 
+>>> message
+>>> saying "You have new mail".
+>>>
+>>> b/ Users who have configured a real mail address in msec
+>>> Installing dma as a require will cause these mails to actually start 
+>>> being
+>>> delivered. Since the user has put the real mail address in the msec
+>>> configuration we have to assume they actually want the mails to be
+>>> delivered so that is a "good thing".  If their ISP will only accept 
+>>> mail
+>>>    from a real MTA as mentioned by Frank Griffin then the message 
+>>> will not be
+>>> delivered unless a relay host is defined in dma. Since they are already
+>>> not being delivered nothing will have changed.
+>>>
+>>> c/ New users of Mageia 2
+>>> Changing the defaults in /etc/security/msec/level.* will suppress 
+>>> emails
+>>> other than to those users who have specifically requested them.
+>>>
+>>>
+>>> Hope that helps
+>>>
+>>> Derek
+>>>
+>>>
+>> So if nobody objects or sees other problem with this, i'll modify
+>> the defaults in /etc/security/msec/level.* to not send email by default
+>> and making dma a suggest for msec.
+>>
+> This poses another problem:
+>
+> On a default configuration, we would enable sending reports by 
+> installing dma with
+> the msec update, but also disable sending of all reports by changing 
+> the default settings,
+> which will apply for everybody who has not run msec-gui or configured 
+> msec manually.
+> So this change would be quite antipodal.
+>
+> I'm for not changing the default to send mail to root, as this would 
+> enable sending of
+> reports on default configurations, and change nothing for 
+> configurations where people
+> want those reports sent by mail.
+>
+> Opinions, please?
+
+Option 1 disables sending reports by default.
+Option 3 ensures that if the user decides to enable sending reports, 
+everything needed to send reports locally is already installed.
+Considering that dma is only adds 64 k, and yields gracefully if another 
+MTA is installed, that is not a big overhead.
+
+However note that ignored messages quickly accumulate and will end up 
+occupying a lot of disk space, which would be problematic after a while 
+for users with limited space on their / partition.
+Because of this, I would suggest another change :
+(maybe call it option 1+ ?)
+1) No default destination.  (It is now MAIL_USER=root for all security 
+levels.)
+and
+2) To make this effective, msec will have to be changed so that if there 
+is no email adresse (or userid) is entered, then no email is sent, even 
+if sending is inadvertantly enabled.
+
+I've tested msec, and if
+1) sending a security alert is enabled, and
+2) there is no default defined (stored as MAIL_USER= in 
+/etc/security/msec/level.*), and
+3) there is an empty send-to field (stored as MAIL_USER= in 
+/etc/security/msec/security.conf),
+an email is now sent to root.
+
+It may be that msec is sending the email without an addressee, and it is 
+automatically routed it to root by my MTA (sendmail).
+
+This change should be relatively simple to implement (once we find the 
+place in the code), as instead of sending an alert email to a default 
+destination (root) if the user hasn't entered one, the alert is simply 
+not sent.
+
+my 2 cents :-)
+
+-- 
+André
+
+