>>>>> On April 6, 2026 Michael Tokarev <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 06.04.2026 01:50, Greg Klanderman via Postfix-users wrote: >>>>>>> On April 5, 2026 Michael Tokarev via Postfix-users >>>>>>> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Actually, when apt installs something new, it considers >>> Recommends: for *all* packages it installs. So if A depends on B, >>> and B recommends C, and you install A, C will be installed too >>> (unless you disable installing recommends). Ditto for the case >>> when A *recommends* B, etc. >> >>> In short, by default apt installs Recommends for everything it >>> installs. >> What you've written here does not match the situation I described. >> What if, before asking to install A, B had already been installed, >> but without C? > If you earlier install B without installing its recommendations, - > sure, apt wont install these recommendations when you later install > something else which depends on (or recommends) B. > The whole Recommends thing, and skipping installing recommendations, > assumes that the user knows what he's doing, and can deal with the > possible consequences. In this particular case, just by reading the > error message, I would immediately see which mechs are available to > begin with - like, asking google how to list installed sasl auth > mechanisms. Or something like this. Hi Michael, My point is, that when I just installed trixie/13 a week ago and then switched the sources to testing/14, the state of the system when I then ran 'apt install postfix' (A) was that libsasl2-2 (B) had already been installed, but not libsasl2-modules (C). So when I installed postfix, no sasl modules were installed. I *never* used the option to skip installing recommendations. This contrasts with the last time I built my mail server, on buster/10, where the recommended libsasl2-modules did get installed. Of course that was many years ago and I do not have details of the state of the system at each step, but my detailed notes show that I did not have to manually install libsasl2-modules, and this is confirmed by it still being in the "automatically installed" state. So, something has changed since buster wrt the initial state of the distribution, such that libsasl2-2 seems to come installed without its recommended libsasl2-modules. Maybe that should be reverted so that libsasl2-modules does get included in the base system with libsasl2-2? As an alternate way to restore the previously intended behavior, I had earlier asked whether postfix should recommend rather than suggest libsasl2-modules, and you responded: > It should not. There are multiple possible sasl implementations (there's > also dovecot for example), and actually, there are a lot of installs > where nothing else besides basic mail system is needed - consider a > case of a server in a server room, which should collect mails from > cron and send it to a dedicated mailhub: such case is actually very > common. So actually we have another problem, where an *extra*, > unwanted, software is installed by default. Of course, but the intent seems to be that postfix recommends libsasl2-modules. Currently that recommendation is indirect, and is being thwarted by the initial state of the system. I don't see how making the recommendation directly would be a bad thing. This would have no change other than to install libsasl2-modules in the case I encountered, where libsasl2-2 had been previously installed without libsasl2-modules. Otherwise, it is already installed by default when installing postfix. > Choosing defaults is not a fun problem, - you cant suit every needs > out there. But I really like the way debian does here, allowing to > install a minimal system with just a bare minimum software for the > task at hand, instead of always insisting on everything being installed. The change I asked about would not preclude using --no-install-recommends to exclude libsasl2-modules, just as would be needed without that change. Greg _______________________________________________ Postfix-users mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
