Re: 23.0.60; emacs-report-bug fails silently

[Florian Beck <abstraktion@t-online.de>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Duh!  Thank you for tracking this down.  I've changed the default of
> mail-interactive with the patch below.

Embarrassingly, I cannot verify this, because after I had a stab at
configuring sendmail ubuntu doesn't let my un-configure what I have
done. Even after brutally deleting files I have touched, sendmail now
refuses to return an error code.

Anyway, your patch does of course *not* help in the case that sendmail
or postfix is halfway configured, ie. delivers mail locally (which means
in practise the mail most likely is never seen). This is quite likely to
happen because, as far as I remember, either anti spam software or some
web server stuff required me to install postfix (but it didn't require
that it worked properly).

Maybe Emacs should require the user to set up her mail. That is, if not
configured, it should return an error. Inconvenient with emacs -Q,  I
know. Probably worth it if you consider it likely sendmail is misconfigured.

>
>         Stefan
>
> --- sendmail.el.~1.314.~	2008-05-11 17:49:35.000000000 -0400
> +++ sendmail.el	2008-06-06 01:58:09.000000000 -0400
> @@ -114,7 +114,11 @@
>    :group 'sendmail)
>
>  ;;;###autoload
> -(defcustom mail-interactive nil
> +(defcustom mail-interactive t
> +  ;; We used to use a default of nil rather than t, but nowadays it is very
> +  ;; common for sendmail to be misconfigured, so one cannot rely on the
> +  ;; bounce message to be delivered anywhere, least of all to the
> +  ;; user's mailbox.
>    "Non-nil means when sending a message wait for and display errors.
>  nil means let mailer mail back a message to report errors."
>    :type 'boolean

-- 
Florian Beck