Snowulf recently migrated servers and on the new one I didn’t set up postfix. After all, I don’t want it to accept any mail and since I have no need to relay mail, why would I need an MTA? Well other than to get around New York City, it turns out that sendmail is part of that postfix install on Ubuntu.
See, our blog here uses sendmail (as does many simple pieces of software) to alert me of comments to the blog. It also alerts any users that “subscribe” to an entry of new comments too. Last Friday, I noticed there were comments showing up on the blog entries (Thanks Brion) and I hadn’t received an email. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to track down the issue. One `apt-get install sendmail` later and I had postfix. It is ‘recommended’ not required but apt-get felt like installing it anyways, so who am I to stand in the way of apt-get progress. More importantly, I now get emails alerting me to blog comments.
We do wuvvle the comments. Makes us feel like we’re not just standing on a street corner shouting “The end is near” like a crazy person, but actually talking to someone (like a crazy person).