# Question about sendmail



## taggedzi (Feb 20, 2012)

I am trying to set up a game server, and I'm trying to eliminate unneeded programs.  Does FreeBSD 9.0 Release require the sendmail program to be running in order to function properly?

For my purposes I will not be sending any mail from this computer.  My apologies if this is a simple question but I am relatively new to FreeBSD.

Thanks in advance.


----------



## Dies_Irae (Feb 20, 2012)

From FreeBSD Handbook - 29.4.2 Disable sendmail:



> Warning: If you disable sendmail's outgoing mail service, it is important that you replace it with an alternative mail delivery system. If you choose not to, system functions such as periodic(8) will be unable to deliver their results by e-mail as they would normally expect to. Many parts of your system may expect to have a functional sendmail-compatible system. If applications continue to use sendmail's binaries to try to send e-mail after you have disabled them, mail could go into an inactive sendmail queue, and never be delivered.


----------



## kpa (Feb 20, 2012)

The overhead of having the sendmail(8) daemons running in the background is really negligible, I wouldn't bother. You'll find other ways to tune your system for your purpose that are far more effective tuning(7), http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/config-tuning.html.


----------



## debguy (Mar 7, 2012)

Yes, keep it.  Sendmail delivers system messages and you might have problems if programs are trying to do this and it's broken. If it isn't broke don't fix it (esp. mail - your asking for hours of headaches maybe). Sendmail is not the simplest or most robust these days. Neither would be replacing or disabling it.



> I am trying to set up a game server.



I suggest using a playstation for games.  Really.

I suggest enjoyable side-work and also bothering women instead of computer games 

Have fun!


----------

